hooks, the poor thrush lay on its back on the floor of the cage, just a small heap of feathers.

“Do yer still think he was worth the money?” enquired Jonas.

Aaron burst into a loud laugh, moved to the display of this unseemly merriment by the blank disappointment depicted on all the children’s faces. But he didn’t laugh long.

For Andrew, who was standing nearest to him, struck him such a blow across his shoulders, that Aaron, unsteady on his legs at the best of times, stumbled, tried to save himself, and finally fell with a crash to the floor.

At the same moment, a handful of leather bootlaces whistled round Andrew’s ears, their brass tags making themselves felt unmercifully on his neck and face, for the cobbler was wielding this original scourge with a will. But, instead of attacking the cobbler, as most other boys would have done, Andrew continued his assault upon Aaron, kicking at him with all his might as he lay prone on the floor.

“Shut up, Andrew,” cried Phil and Jack, in one breath.

Furious as they were at the way in which they had been tricked, they would have scorned to strike such a poor creature as Aaron.

“How can you be such a cad as to touch such a poor chap?” they said.

“Hope you like yer dead bird,” came in a muffled, jeering voice from Aaron, who had evidently more spirit than strength, “hurry ’ome, I would, and make a pie of him.”

His cousins, however, were well used to schoolboys’ mills and stuck to their guns. Even Gaston and Hubert, at a wink from them, had risen to the occasion. Each had seized one of Andrew’s feet and was hanging on to it, like little terriers to a rat.

But the girls were pale and tearful. Phoena was absorbed by her grief for the thrush’s death, but Fay and Di were ashamed of the whole business.

“You had no right to deceive us about the bird,” said Fay to the cobbler, who was now calmly resuming his cobbling, leaving the “young uns” to square up accounts by themselves; “you ought to have told us it was dead, when we first asked you about it.”

“You ought to have asked if it was alive, if you were particular on that point,” retorted Jonas, catching the end of his long thread between his teeth, and suiting it to the length he desired.

“Of course, we supposed it was.”

“Never should suppose anything without knowing it for sartin.”

“But we’d seen it alive so lately,” began Phoena.

“Well, and if you had happened to have come an hour earlier, you’d have seen it alive then. ’Twasn’t my fault, it died.”

“No, but it was your fault not to tell us that it was dead,” said Di.

“You’re a werry rude old man,” cried Hubert, waxing bold; but Andrew broke in, his tongue being the only member left free, he meant to use it for a final onslaught.

“Now, my good man,” he began, intending to be dignified and opening his mouth extraordinarily wide, after a manner peculiar to himself, “now my goo——”

His mouth shut with a snap, amidst the hearty laughter of all around him. For with an aim so direct that it could not err, and with such promptness that no interference would have been possible, Jonas had thrown a big lump of cobbler’s wax straight into Andrew’s pompously parted jaws.

And so this episode, which the boys had fondly hoped might end perhaps in a little bloodshed, was concluded by this comical finale, which provoked all the spectators from sober Faith down to little Gaston to ungovernable merriment.

Only Andrew looked as black as the offending missile itself.

“And as that last attention wasn’t reckoned for in the bargain, you can have your money back again,” laughed the old cobbler, producing the half-crown, “and my best wishes along with it; that when you next try to set the world to rights, you’ll make a better job of it. And, as for you,” nodding at Andrew, “don’t you pick out a lame dog again to show your strength on. Coward’s trick, I call that.”

“Ay, ay,” echoed Aaron’s voice from the background, where he had disappeared, “a coward’s trick, and no mistake.”

“WE must convene a Chapter and degrade him.”

They had scarcely reached the outskirts of Playden, when Jack made this thrilling announcement. He was perched on the upper bar of a style in the middle of the field leading to Gaybrook, and his tone was as decided and as impressive as the occasion demanded.

“Of course we must,” agreed Phil, tweaking Hubert, significantly.

“Of course we must,” said Andrew’s valet, in response to the tweak.

Andrew, meanwhile, the person to be degraded, was walking ahead in solitary sulkiness.

“He ought never to have been made a knight, he’s not got anything knightly in him,” said Phil, “if he’s kept in the Order at all, he ought to be made to rank below Gaston.”

“But the fact is,” said Jack, “he oughtn’t to be kept in at all. It’s the second time that he’s behaved like a sneak, and made fools of us.”

“But, boys,” began Faith, “you must remember that Andrew has never been to school.”

“No fear of our forgetting that, Grannie Faith,” retorted Phil; whilst Di added: “But you know if you turn him out the Order will be a very small one.”

“Yes,” said Phoena, “but we want quality, not quantity.”

But though the boys applauded this remark, they nevertheless felt that there was something, too, to be said for Di’s argument.

“I do wonder how they’ll settle it,” said Fay, who was sorely divided in her mind as to which course would prove best to produce peace and concord. She would have been far more troubled had she guessed the resolution regarding the punishment to be inflicted on Andrew which had been decided upon.

“The execution of the sentence must take place after dinner,” Jack had ruled, “and in the meanwhile none of us must cast so much as a single glance at the renegade knight, commonly known as Andrew Durand.”

And so rigorously did they all obey this command, that when after dinner all the boys disappeared, leaving Andrew alone, he was so tired of being sent to Coventry, that he quite hailed Hubert’s return as the bearer of a formal citation. This was to summon him to appear before his co-knights to answer certain charges against him.

“What do you mean, you little donkey?” cried Andrew, impatiently, as Hubert was conscientiously but laboriously delivering himself of his errand, “I was just going out butterfly hunting, and I can’t stop here for ever listening to your rotten message.”

“You’ve got to come down to the river-meadow,” said Hubert, punctuating each word with a nod of his head, “and if you don’t come dreckly they’ll come and fetch you.”

“I shall come when it suits me,” was Andrew’s reply.

“He’s trying to be cock-lofty,” was Hubert’s report to those who sent him, “but I believe he is coming all the same.”

“He’d better,” said his judges, “now young uns, remember your duty.”

Accustomed to the intense stillness of his grandmother’s house, these continual fights and rumours of fights not only bewildered him, they were utterly distasteful to him. But, now he felt that his honour as a Frenchman was at stake, and stay he must.

“Behold the recreant knight,” cried Jack, as Andrew approached.

“What a pity,” said Phil, “that we couldn’t kodak the scene, it’s bound to be thrilling.”

The spot selected for this rather original court of justice was certainly a very pretty one. Jack, the president, had taken up his position against the trunk of a huge willow tree, whose silver-coated branches swept the surface of the river, which gave its name to the low-lying meadows. An old meal tub, reversed, supplied Jack’s seat, whilst a conveniently forked branch on either side of him furnished admirable perches for his two aides-de-camp, Hubert and Gaston. Gaston had selected the safest branch, whilst Hubert, with great glee, had clambered into the fork of the bough which hung so immediately over the water, that his dangling toes just swept the rippling wavelets. Phil apparently combined the offices of prosecutor, witness, and jury in the oncoming trial.

Feeling secretly much alarmed, Andrew presented himself before the court.

“Look sharp and say what you want,” he said, “I’m going after butterflies.”

“We must ask the butterflies to excuse your attendance to-day,” said Jack.

“And I shall want you, Hubert, to carry my net,” went on Andrew, ignoring Jack’s last speech.

“Wish you may get him,” said Phil, whilst Jack added:

“Yes, we’re not going to let you join in anything again,” said Phil.

“I don’t mean to have anything more to do with any of you,” said Andrew, “I was on my way to tell you so.”

“Oh! you thought that you were going to sneak out of your rightful punishment that way, did you?” cried Phil; “pretty joke that.”

“Hm! you won’t find that so easy,” said Jack; “when soldiers and sailors are dismissed from Her Majesty’s service they don’t exactly take up their hats and say ‘Good-day’ to their superior officers, and stroll off as if they were going to a picnic. The law takes a little personal notice of them first, you know, just as we are going to pay a little special attention to you now. Hm!” and Jack cleared his throat significantly.

At this signal, which had been settled before, Hubert and Gaston descended from their perches and stood at attention on either side of the accused, and facing Jack.

“Keep your distance, you two grinning apes,” cried Andrew; “look out, you frog, or it will be the worse for you,” he added, giving a poke in the ribs to Hubert, and a pinch to Gaston’s arm.

But the proud position in which they found themselves rendered both small boys impervious to their injuries.

“Therefore we have decided,” pursued Jack, “to allow you your choice of two alternatives; by accepting either, you will have a chance of paying the penalty for your cowardly behaviour, and thus redeeming your reputation.”

“I’m not a coward, and I’ve not behaved as one,” said Andrew.

“It was all done by mistake, I didn’t mean to do it,” said Andrew.

“Oh! all right then, you’re prepared to come along with us now, are you, this very moment, to Playden, and apologise like a man and a gentleman to the miserable Aaron? Look here, we’ll come with you, so that you shan’t run a chance of being paid out by them.”

“But with people of that sort,” said Phil, “an apology is only half the battle; you’ll have to stump up that half-crown you’ve got stowed away somewhere.”

“A likely story,” cried Andrew; “I’m not going near that cobbler’s den again, I can tell you.”

“If you’re not the very biggest cad that ever breathed, you will,” said Phil; “why, when we had a row with some street cads at school, and one poor chap got his tooth knocked out, we all clubbed and gave him five shillings, just because we were gentlemen and he was a cad.”

“I don’t care a mouldy rat,” replied Andrew, “whether you knock out a gutter-scraper’s teeth or your own, but you won’t find me fagging over to Playden, it’s not good enough.”

“He’s werry cheeky,” exclaimed Hubert, who was genuinely amazed at such open defiance on Andrew’s part.

A sudden blow from Andrew sent him sprawling his full length on the ground, and thus the formal character of the proceedings was entirely dissipated. Before Hubert could find his feet again, Phil and Jack had fallen upon Andrew, and a tremendous struggle ensued.

“And the sooner he gets it the better,” said Phil.

“Shut up, will you,” shouted Andrew, who, feeling himself powerless in the hands of the schoolboys, with Hubert and Gaston as their helpers, was really alarmed; “Shut up, will you? I’m not a bit afraid for myself, but you’ll find it rather poor fun, I can tell you, to drown a chap.”

“Poor fun, do you think so? Wait and see,” said Phil; “besides, if you behave yourself, we may just stop short of drowning you; give you a chance, at any rate, of seeing what a really good ducking will do for you.”

“And it shall be a ducking and a half, you bet,” said Jack, cheerfully. “Come on, you fellows,” he added, and having finished tying Andrew’s hands and feet together, Jack gave him the first decisive shove towards the stream.

It was a very shallow one, you know, measuring about twelve feet across from bank to bank, and hardly deep enough at the point where the willow grew to reach Gaston’s elbow standing upright, but Andrew’s terror of water in any shape was only equal to his fear of cows, so that the prospect of being thrust head foremost into the river made him wild.

“Better behave pretty,” jeered Phil. “Why, you’re wriggling like one of your miserable butterflies when you stick a pin through them. You are always so sure they’re enjoying it, try and enjoy this too.”

“I’m fa—ain—ting,” whined Andrew; “the doctor would——”

“Order cold water like a shot for you,” rejoined Jack. “Now then, boys!”

“Look your last, Andrew, at the pretty green fields,” began Phil, helping in the gentle propelling of Andrew into the stream, “and the bright blue sky, for here you are going, going, going, gone!”

But when boys are bent on tormenting each other it is not always easy to stop short at the precise point at which they had intended to limit their operations, and so, thanks to Andrew’s struggles partly, and partly to the temptation that the other boys felt to keep up the idea that their luckless victim was in real bodily danger, the exploit ended in the whole party rolling into the river together. The water was so shallow, and their plight was so ludicrous, and apparently so little harm was done to anyone, that even the little boys laughed heartily.

“We’ve got a bit of a ducking,” said Jack, whose first thought had been for Hubert and Gaston, “but we’ll soon dry in this broiling sun.”

“On the whole, it has been quite refreshing,” laughed Phil.

“Werry much so,” chimed in the little boys. But Gaston’s teeth were chattering from the shock of his sudden immersion into the Gay.

Andrew, standing dripping from head to foot, said nothing.

“And will he go back to his kind sister Faith, and show her his little wet jacket?” jeered Phil, as Andrew presently moved off.

“Look here, old chap,” cried Jack, good-naturedly, “do like us. Put your jacket here to dry in the sun. This bit of grass is as good as a hot plate any day,” and he pointed to a sun-baked patch where the younger boys’ garments were already spread out, “and we none of us got wet to the skin.”

“Yes, give us your jacket,” said Phil.

“OH, Fay, wake up, do wake up, there’s burglars at our door!”

It was just midnight, and for the last two hours an unbroken silence had reigned within Gaybrook Farm.

But now Marygold, with her long hair tumbling over her little nightgown, was standing beside Faith’s bed tugging at her sheets with all her might. “There, there it is again,” as a loud but dull thud came against the lower panels of the door.

Poor Faith, who had till this moment been sound asleep, started up in bewildered alarm.

“It is burglars,” repeated Marygold, “and I can’t find the matches.”

By this time, however, Faith had collected both the matches and her wits, and was lighting the candle.

“Who, who’s there?” she asked, in rather unsteady tones.

Then a very frightened little voice made itself heard.

“Oh, please Fay, I can’t find the handle, and I’m so frightened out here in this ghostly passage, and Andrew’s dying.”

Poor, half-awake Hubert was meanwhile telling his sleepy story to Marygold.

“I b’lieve Andrew’s dying. Phil and Jack are awfully frightened ’cause he is making such a funny noise and doesn’t seem able to breaf a bit. I was to run as fast as I could for Fay, they said, but it was all dark, and I hit my head three times and knocked my elbow dreffully.”

“Suppose we go and tell Di and Phoena,” suggested Marygold; “they’ll be ever so frightened,” she added, in a tone of distinct cheerfulness.

“Oh, yes, let’s,” assented Hubert; it was joy to create a sensation.

But before they had succeeded in awakening Di satisfactorily, or in even making Phoena open her eyes, Ruth had swept down on these young “pilgrims of the night,” and arrested their further exploits.

“There, Miss Di, take Miss Marion into bed with you and keep her quiet,” said Ruth, tucking Marygold into a corner of the huge bed in which Di lost herself every night. “And you come along with me, Master Hubert, we don’t want you running over the house in the middle of the night and catching your death of cold.” And with less gentleness than her wont, Ruth caught Hubert up in her arms and disappeared with him, just when Phoena was beginning anxiously to enquire what had happened.

“Hubert says that Andrew’s dying,” said Marygold.

“Who told Hubert so?” asked Phoena, very wide awake now and sitting up in her bed. “Did Fay say so?”

“No, it was Phil and Jack b’lieved it,” said Marygold.

“Oh! that all, I suppose his breathing was bad and they were frightened,” said Phoena.

“I expect if we listen, we may hear if there is much disturbance,” said Diana.

And so she did, but the only thing she heard distinctly was presently the sound of her cousins’ snoring; their anxiety was not keeping them awake! Phoena’s fears, however, were not so easily allayed.

Nor did she feel reassured when after much opening and shutting of distant doors, she finally heard the sound of hasty footsteps on the flags of the stable-yard below, then that of horse’s hoofs. Blackberry, the farmers’ stout cob, which did all the errands, was being led out of the stable, Phoena made that out plainly, and then, a minute later, she heard someone trot off at a round pace.

Phoena began to tremble in her little bed. Andrew must be very ill, she felt sure of that now, and they were fetching the doctor.

“Oh dear! oh dear! I do hope Andrew isn’t very, very bad,” she said half-aloud, “it’s dreadful to lie here and wonder all through the long night. How I do wish the hours would strike faster.”

The clock struck some twenty minutes later, but Phoena did not hear it. She had fallen asleep again and only awoke to hear Ruth bidding Di and herself to get up as quietly as they could and go down the stairs softly to breakfast.

“Poor Master Andrew has been very ill in the night,” she explained, adding, that though he was better before the doctor left, it was of great importance that his sleep should not be disturbed.

“Did the doctor say that he was dangerously ill?” asked Di.

“What’s she doing?” asked Di.

“Sleeping, I hope, poor little soul,” said Ruth, “she’s fairly worn out.”

“Oh! Fay likes fussing with steam-kettles and mustard leaves,” said Diana, rather contemptuously.

“I don’t know if she likes it,” retorted Ruth, “but she’s a very clever little nurse, and as to Master Andrew, he’s the best patient I ever saw. Poor boy, how he did suffer and struggle for breath last night, and never a word of complaint.”

“Oh! he’s never half so horrid when he’s ill,” began Di; but by this time Ruth had gone, taking Marygold with her, to ensure that Faith’s belated night’s rest was not interrupted by any inroads from her usual small room-fellow.

“Poor Andrew,” said Phoena, beginning her toilet. “I am sorry he’s ill.”

“Oh! it’s his nature to be seedy,” said Di, speaking rather crossly, because she was in sharp conflict with a tangle in her long wavy hair, “you know that we always hear that he’s such a wonderful saint when he’s ill and he is such a toad when he isn’t.”

“I should think that it must be harder to be nice when you are ill than when you’re well,” remarked Phoena, rather dreamily.

“It’s very shocking to speak so hard-hearted, Miss Di,” said Ruth, re-appearing at this moment, “maybe you’ll be sorry for it, some fine day.”

“Wouldn’t a wet day do just as well?” retorted Di, pertly, “why are all the nasty things to happen on fine days?”

“That sharp little tongue of yours will bring you into trouble, Miss Di, if you’re not careful,” said long-suffering Ruth, taking pity all the same on Di’s unsuccessful attempts to complete her dressing. “There’s an old saying, you know, that ‘a sharp tongue cuts its owner’s throat.’ ”

“Oh! you good old Ruth, don’t begin preaching so early in the day,” said Di; “of course, I’m dreadfully sorry for Andrew and I mean to be ever so careful not to disturb him.”

And certainly she kept her word, declaring, as she went down stairs, that she should beg the boys to be very kind to Andrew.

But there was no need for her to exhort them on that point.

Jack and Phil were full of compassion for their cousin, a compassion which as Di guessed, was greatly leavened with compunction.

For though no one, not even Hubert, had divulged a word of the ducking, the schoolboys’ own conscience accused them pretty clearly as to the cause of Andrew’s sharp attack of illness.

And though they might have been heard muttering more than once, “Well, it only served him right!” their tone signified unmistakably, “I wish to goodness that we’d never done it.”

“Poor old beggar,” said Jack, “to see him panting like a steam engine and as white as a turnip, and trying all the time to grin over it, made one feel jolly bad all over.”

“Yes, it’s awful hard luck on the wretched chap,” said Phil, “I wish one could do something for the poor specimen.”

“I expect,” began Hubert, with some practical shrewdness, “if we never called him ‘Miss Annie’ again, it—”

But Jack broke in, “ ’pon my word, if it wasn’t Sunday, I declare I’d go out and try and catch some of his precious beasties for him.”

“Well, I’ll go and feed his gold fish now,” said Di, getting up from the table, whilst Phoena, without announcing her intentions, went to attend the canary and guinea-pig.

“We’ve all got to start by half-past ten for church, remember,” said Di, looking back from the door.

“All right,” said the boys—they were delightfully docile to-day.

“And you’ll remember to keep quiet, because of Andrew,” added Di.

And so, though Fay was not there to marshal her flock into good order, it was a very well-behaved party that set out from Gaybrook Farm for the parish church, on that summer Sunday morning.

“And they all behaved like models all through the service,” reported Ruth, who had watched them rather anxiously from her exalted seat in the gallery, “I was rather afraid how the young gentlemen might behave, if anything went wrong with the singing, as does sometimes happen, or if the sermon was extra long,” she confided to Mrs. Busson.

“All the same,” said Ruth, “little Miss Marion did look straight at the sight of the high pews, as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I believe she was a bit frightened.”

Gaybrook Church, with its mossy leaning grave-stones on the outside, and its old-world galleries and pews inside, along with its service which had been unaltered for the last fifty years, were all of the most ancient description. So that both Hubert and Marygold, who had never in their short lives been in a high pew before, were almost alarmed when they were shut into one of these formidable-looking boxes, which, as Marygold remarked afterwards, “didn’t smell at all nice.”

Still it never occurred to them to behave less well than they would have done in their own church at home, although their attention, and their eyes too, would keep wandering to their new surroundings.

They were half fascinated, half awed, by the imposing mural tablets which frowned down on them from over their own and their neighbours’ pews, displaying such a variety of designs and devices. One tablet attracted Hubert greatly, from which a helmet stood out in such bold relief that he wondered if it would take off, whilst Marygold was deeply interested in the white marble effigy of a little girl, almost as big as herself, kneeling in a flowing robe with clasped hands on a level with her chin.

Why was that little girl there, she wondered, and had she been kneeling there for a great, great many years?

“Please tell me what’s written there,” she whispered to Phoena after the service was over; “it must tell about her death, I think.”

This was the life-size effigy of a recumbent knight, painted black, and looking ancient and grim beyond description. The shape of his shield and his crossed legs delighted Phoena, as showing that that old knight had been a Crusader, whilst Hubert fell in love with the hound which had crouched for so many years in stony stillness at his master’s feet.

“Now, doesn’t it seem curious?” cried Phoena, eagerly, as they came out of church, “that there should be a real old knight lying there? It seems as if it was to remind us that they really did live once, and did all the grand, brave things one can only read about now.”

“But then they only got buried and painted black,” said Phil, dismally.

“But they’ll never be forgotten,” said Di, quickly.

“I should like to know what great things that grand old chap had done,” remarked Jack, thoughtfully.

They were going through a barley field just then, where the foot-track was so narrow that they were obliged to walk singly between the sea of ripening, drooping ears on either side.

“I wonder,” repeated Jack, “what sort of grand things that old fellow did so many years ago.”

The summer breeze was whispering amongst the gently swaying barley, and Phoena was following closely upon Jack’s heels, so that she might well have heard his musings, and answered them, but nevertheless the words which presently rang in Jack’s ears in reply to his own questioning came neither from Phoena’s lips, nor were they borne on the pleasant breeze, and yet no words ever sounded more distinctly, at least so far as Jack’s hearing was concerned.

“Bother,” said Jack, audibly, “I don’t believe he would have, either.”

As they came through the porch into the house-place the children ran up against Dr. Forbes and Mrs. Busson in grave consultation.

“No, indeed! indeed!” the latter was saying, her usually bright face clouded with distress, “I can’t think, Dr. Forbes, how the poor child could have come by such a chill, for as to letting him sleep in an unaired bed, why, sir, you know me better than to believe——”

But Jack broke in.

“It was my fault, doctor,” he said; “we thought we’d give him a lesson, so we ducked him in the stream yesterday. Is he awfully bad?”

Jack’s voice grew shaky with the last words, and he was red to the tips of his ears.

“Not awfully bad, I hope, my boy,” replied the doctor, “but bad enough to teach you a lesson, young man, not to play such pranks again on a weakly fellow. You’ve caused him a lot of suffering, and a deal of anxiety to others besides.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Jack, simply.

“It was just as much our faults,” chimed in Phil and Hubert; “we all helped.”

“Well, you’re all a nice set of young scamps,” said the doctor. “You are a brave woman, Mrs. Busson, to undertake the care of them.”

That afternoon a letter directed in Jack’s best writing, and posted only with his and Phil’s knowledge, carried the following lines to Mrs. Durand:

“THERE, I must say, Libbie,” remarked Mrs. Busson, as she busied herself with her Saturday’s tidying of store-room and linen-press, “we do seem to have had a nice, quiet week since last Sunday. One may say of those dear children that if they came in like lions, they’ll go out like lambs.”

“They haven’t gone yet, ma’am,” said Libbie, in a decided, though deferential tone, and she sighed somewhat significantly.

Libbie felt that she had paid rather heavily towards maintaining that week of peace.

Diana had taken to making cheese instead of mischief, and to stirring up jams instead of strife, and Libbie’s patience had not been a little taxed by the mis-placed zeal Di had displayed in both these pursuits; indeed, more than once Libbie had come near to losing her temper altogether, Di having achieved the loss already of much of her toil and time. Still it was certainly a fact beyond dispute, as Fay and Phoena agreed, that when Di was happily occupied and Andrew was invalided, matters went much more smoothly.

Andrew took a full week to recover from his sharp attack of asthma. On the whole he enjoyed that week very much, for not only were the girls his willing slaves, but the boys did their share as well in helping to amuse him. Although they generally hated the sight of dominoes, and voted a game of chess worse than vulgar fractions, yet whenever they came indoors they rushed up to Andrew’s room to offer to have a game with him, and they never once called him “Miss Annie.”

“It’s a pity that he’s such a frightened little frog,” said Hubert.

To Marygold’s grief Hubert had taken to copying his elder brother’s contempt for Gaston.

“I wouldn’t like to be such a silly,” he added.

“It’s a great pity that you don’t try in a kind way to make him braver,” said Fay, severely. “Yesterday, for instance, when he was so afraid of being struck by the cricket ball, instead of telling him that it would be sure to break his legs, it would have been much kind——”

“Preachey, preachey,” broke in Hubert, so rudely that Phil, who joined the party at that moment, promptly fell on him.

“Look here, you’re getting too cheeky,” he declared, with a warning shake: “we shall have to court-martial you. How dare you speak like that to Fay? How dare you, you young monkey?”

“I dare what I choose,” retorted the young culprit, defiantly.

Hubert’s fearlessness in the face of chastisement always appealed powerfully to his big brothers’ admiration, so that however much they might threaten him with a “jolly good licking,” neither Jack nor Phil would ever have carried out their threat on the small boy, whose pluck was their favourite boast at school.

“You may beat me to death if you like,” Hubert proceeded to observe.

“What’s up now?” enquired Jack, who came to see what was going on.

Faith rehearsed what had taken place.

“I’m sorry I was rude to you, Faith,” said Hubert, with the grandly condescending air of a royal penitent, “but I was quite right all——”

“Chain up,” broke in Phil, “you weren’t asked to furnish any additional remarks about yourself. Now go on, Jack, with what you were saying.”

“And then you must finish your penance,” continued Jack, “by fetching Gaston, and we’ll give him a lesson in cricket.”

“And you’d better not try to frighten him over it, do you hear?” said Phil.

“I’d much raver be licked than have to play,” began Hubert.

“But small boys can’t always get what they want, even when it is a licking,” said Jack. “Now, off you go, or you shall have the frog and a whacking too.”

“It really would be kind,” said Fay, “to try to teach Gaston in a gentle way to be a little more like an English boy.”

“We can try, but I don’t think that we shall ever succeed,” said Phil.

“So you’ve brought him,” cried Jack, as, a few minutes later, Hubert came back with Gaston, whose eyes looked red with crying. “Now, look here, Gaston, do you or don’t you want to belong to us?”

“But I do, I do,” said the boy, eagerly.

“All right; but then you’ll have to do as we do, and not be a silly little French doll,” said Jack.

“So now,” went on Jack, “if we teach you to play cricket, you mustn’t funk a few whacks from the ball.”

“Nor drop it like a hot potato, when you should field it,” said Phil.

“No, no, certainly not,” said Gaston, with quivering lips.

“And you’ll have to learn to climb trees like an Englishman, not like a monkey,” said Phil; “we’ll show you the difference.”

“And, besides that, you’ll have to learn heaps of other things,” interrupted Hubert, just a little disappointed that Gaston did not seem more alarmed by the programme sketched out for him; “you’ll have to—” But his eloquence was arrested by Jack, who promptly toppled him over to teach him to hold his tongue when his elders were talking.

“Very well then, come along, old chap, and we’ll make a man of you,” said Jack, and therewith the first lesson in cricket began.

“I’M dreadfully afraid that those boys have been bullying Gaston again,” Phoena remarked to Faith, some days later.

“Why, I saw them all starting out together to play cricket on the common,” said Faith, “less than an hour ago.”

“I know, but when I came through the orchard just now, Gaston dashed past me, with his head down, and flew through a gap in the hedge. I did not run after him, for I saw he did not want me to notice him.”

“Really,” cried Fay, a little impatiently, “I think it must be his own fault. Our boys are not really bullies; see how good they are to the infants, and I’m sure if Gaston would only play with them like a sensible boy they would be glad enough to have him.”

“Of course they would,” put in Di; “the truth is, he can’t get on with them, because he’s such a wretched little French specimen. He’s only fit to sit by Phoena and tell silly stories about French fairies. Ugh! I’m glad I wasn’t born a French girl.”

“It’s no credit to you that you weren’t,” said Phoena, quickly, “and I think it’s very unkind of you to be always reminding Gaston of what he can’t help. He never jeers our boys for being English, and I daresay they seem quite as silly to him as—”

“Oh, no, I’m sure they can’t,” broke in Di, whilst Faith added, “I’m certain that Gaston would do anything to be like our boys.”

But even Phoena did not gauge how much Gaston pined to be admitted to an equality with the English boys, for whom he felt an unbounded admiration; nor did she guess how, at the same time, he resented their jeers at his nationality. So long as his parents lived, their little Gaston had been their bijou, their petit coeur—their jewel, their little heart,—and he had been taught to consider France as the grandest country in all the world, and to be proud, very proud, of having been born a Frenchman.

So, when he first came to England to make his home with his grandmother, it was absolutely bewildering to his seven-year-old intelligence to grasp the reason of Madame Delzant’s Martha’s contemptuous pity for his Frenchified ways and clothes, a pity which changed entirely into open scorn when the old lady became too ill to leave her room again, and Gaston was left wholly at the mercy of this well-meaning, but terribly narrow-minded servant.

“You dare tell me, you little French whipper-snapper, that France is as good as England, and that my cooking isn’t as much to your liking as your old Murrie’s, or whatever you call her,” Martha exclaimed; “Not eat my potatoes, indeed!”

This was when Gaston, sighing for his pommes de terre sautées, had pushed aside a plate of plain boiled potatoes with a sigh.

“You’ll learn to starve a little, young gentleman, or have some English sense shaken into you.”

“I wonder,” Gaston said to himself one morning, as he sat on the wall of his grandmother’s garden, “I wonder if the people in England do not like being called what they really are. I do notice that boy who has red hair does not like being called red-haired, and the only time that Martha ever slapped me was when I said that she looked old. Perhaps they don’t like being called English, so that is why, when they want to be unpleasing to me, they call me a French boy. I’ll try, and see.” And, anxious to test the worth of his new theory, Gaston slipped off the wall and accosted an ancient man, who was trimming the laurels.

“Jardinor,” he began, standing well beyond the range of that functionary’s shears, “Jardinor, you’re an Englishman.”

“Thank the Lord, I am. I’d have been ashamed to have been born anything else,” returned old Wakeford, with a heartiness that demolished poor Gaston’s theory.

“Well, it is droll, I do not understand,” he thought, retreating disconcerted, and more bewildered than ever.

Yet, although in his new surroundings, his nationality was so clearly accounted a shameful thing, Gaston was too good a patriot to be persecuted into accounting it so himself. “On the contrary,” he said to himself, “they shall see for themselves, that a French boy can be as good as an English one,” and with a resolution that did credit to his tiny frame and tender age, Gaston, in spite of many involuntary tears and frequent failures, held fast to his determination.

All the same, his present training under the young Kenyons, though it might in the end “make a man” of him, was actually making him very miserable.

Both for Jack and Phil, Gaston’s admiration was unbounded; he would accept all their knocking about as a distinct honour coming from their hands; nor did he, as a rule, resent what Hubert did, or said. But as for Andrew, he hated him.

But this was not due to the old ogre episode—that was long ago forgiven. Gaston’s detestation of Andrew, and the resentment he nourished against him, had a deeper root.

Towards the others he had the cordial feelings that a generous boy has for those whom he knows to be manlier than himself, and was learning to take their chaff, as it was meant; but for Andrew, with his selfishness, his sneaking tricks, and his bragging, which was such a poor disguise for his natural timidity, Gaston had the greatest contempt. To be made an object of ridicule by, or before Andrew, was real torture to Gaston, so true is it, that to be humiliated before those who we despise is about the sharpest form of suffering of which we are capable. To be jeered by Phil or Jack for want of pluck in tree-climbing, or for his “butter-fingers” in letting a ball slip at cricket, was sometimes a little trying to Gaston’s naturally quick temper, but when Andrew ventured to taunt him in like manner, or called him “Mamselle Gaston” when he ran away from a cow (which they all knew that Andrew would never have faced himself), then Gaston’s spirit was sore, with a bitterness beyond all description.

It was because Andrew was standing by, so ready to jeer, that Gaston had lost his temper, on the morning on which our chapter opens, when he brought his own share in that day’s proceedings to a tragical conclusion.

Though Hubert was generally sweet temper itself, he it was who began the disturbance. Andrew had ordered him to carry his bat and stumps to the common, just when Hubert wanted to stay in the orchard, and play at boar-hunting with Gaston and Marygold. So the order to accompany the elder boys to the cricket ground was very unwelcome.

“You can carry Andrew’s things to-day,” Hubert said to Gaston.

“No,” said the latter, who had no mind to serve Andrew, “you are the valet of Andrew, I not.”

“You’d have to carry them if Andrew chose to make you,” said Hubert, incensed at Gaston’s refusal, “yes, you would, Mamselle Gaston.”

It was the first time that Hubert had ever dared call Gaston so, and, though he felt himself under Andrew’s protection, he was half afraid.

And small wonder. The angry flame that leapt into Gaston’s eyes at his words was ill to see.

“Don’t say that again,” he said, speaking in a slow, threatening voice.

“Hullo, you small boys, what are you about?” cried Jack, looking back, “what’s up, eh, Andrew?”

“It strikes me someone will soon be down,” laughed Andrew, “these small boys can’t settle their difficulties, eh, Mamselle Gaston?”

Down the bank he followed, collaring Hubert, before the latter could find his feet, and shaking him with a fury that almost frightened Jack and Phil. Hubert’s nose was streaming with blood, and he looked a pitiable object when Jack extricated him from Gaston’s clutches, but that was not directly. Jack had a schoolboy’s sense of justice, and though Hubert was very dear to him, he knew that he must have drawn this chastisement on himself by his incorrigible cheekiness.

“Now, you’ve both had a jolly good mill,” he said, using his own handkerchief on his little brother’s face with rough tenderness, “and you’ll be both a deal the better for it. Shut up, Andrew, will you?” as the latter tried to egg the combatants on afresh. “My word, old chap, you’ll have a glorious black eye, and no mistake, but I’ll be bound you’ve deserved it. It’s been our fault, though, for not licking you more. Now, Gaston, old man, come and shake hands with your vanquished foe.”

“Yes, and hold up your pecker,” said Phil, patting Gaston on the back, “for you’re a jolly good fellow, who has learnt at last how to use his fists.”

“Yes, yes,” chimed in Jack, “he’s a jolly good fellow.”

Surely no single moment in Gaston’s short life had ever been a prouder one.

For once, he was an acknowledged victor on English soil, and no one remembered to call him “French froggy.”

But alack! alack! they did not forget for long.