en they thought they had had enough of it. They were very
evenly matched, and as a matter of fact did not do one another much
harm; but the joke of the thing was that they never seemed to suspect
how they were being made tools of by the other boys, who always enjoyed
these duels immensely.

Another character, and a very lovable one this time, was a nephew of the
doctor's, Will Johnston by name, but universally called "Teter," an odd
nickname, the reason of which he did not seem to understand himself.
This Teter was one of those good-natured, obliging, reckless,
happy-go-lucky individuals who never fail to win the love of boys. His
generosity was equalled only by his improvidence, and both were
surpassed by his good luck.

Bert conceived a great admiration for Teter Johnston. His undaunted
courage, as exhibited in snowball fights, when, with only a handful of
followers he would charge upon the rest of the school, and generally put
them to flight; his reckless enterprise and amazing luck at marbles and
other games; his constant championing of the small boys when tormented
by the larger ones, more than one bully having had a tremendous
thrashing at his hands;--these were very shining qualities in Bert's
eyes, and they fascinated him so, that if "fagging" had been permitted
at Dr. Johnston's, Bert would have deemed it not a hardship, but an
honour, to have been Teter's "fag."

In strong contrast to his admiration for Teter Johnston was his
antipathy to Rod Graham. Rod was both a sneak and a bully. It was in his
character as a sneak that he showed himself to Bert first, making
profuse demonstrations of goodwill, and doing his best to ingratiate
himself with him, because from his well-to-do appearance he judged that
he would be a good subject from whom to beg lunch, or borrow marbles,
and so on. But Bert instinctively disliked Rod, and avoided him to the
best of his ability. Then Rod revealed the other side of his nature.
From a sneak he turned into a bully, and lost no opportunity of teasing
and tormenting Bert, who, being much smaller than he, felt compelled to
submit, although there were times when he was driven almost to
desperation. It was not so much by open violence as by underhanded
trickery that Rod vented his spite, and this made it all the harder for
Bert, who, although he was never in any doubt as to the identity of the
person that stole his lunch, poured ink over his copy-book, scratched
his slate with a bit o