you mean?--what has that to do
with Lawless?"

"Oh, you muff! don't you understand?--of course, I mean the
boxing-gloves; and when you know how to use your fists, if Lawless comes
it too strong, slip into him."

"He must bully a good deal before I am driven to that," replied I; "I
never struck a blow in anger in my life."

"You will see before long," rejoined Coleman; "but at all events there
is no harm in learning to use your fists; a man should always be able to
defend himself if he is attacked."

"Yes, that's very true," observed I; "but you have not told me anything
of Cumberland. Shall I ever like him, do you think?"

"Not if you are the sort of fellow I take you to be," replied he;
"there's something about Cumberland not altogether right, I fancy;
I'm not very strait-laced myself, particularly if there's any fun in a
thing, not so much so as I should be, I suspect; but Cumberland is too
bad even ~26~~for me; besides, there's no fun in what he does, and then
he's such a humbug--not straightforward and honest, you know. Lawless
would not be half such a bully either, if Cumberland did not set him
on. But don't you say a word about this to any one; Cumberland would
be ready to murder me, or to get somebody else to do it for him--that's
more in his way."

"Do not fear my repeating anything told me in confidence," replied
I; "but what do you mean when you say there's something wrong about
Cumberland?"

"Do you know what Lawless meant by the 'board of green cloth' this
morning?"

"No--it puzzled me."

"I will tell you then," replied Coleman, sinking his voice almost to a
whisper--"the billiard table!"

After telling me this, Coleman, evidently fearing to commit himself
further with one of whom he knew so little, turned the conversation,
and, finding it still wanted more than an hour to dinner, proposed that
we should take a stroll along the shore together. In the course of
our walk I acquired the additional information that another pupil was
expected in a few days--the only son of Sir John Oaklands, a baronet of
large fortune in Hertfordshire; and that an acquaintance of Coleman's,
who knew him, said he was a capital fellow, but very odd--though in what
the oddity consisted did not appear. Moreover, Coleman confirmed me in
my preconceived idea, that Mullins's genius lay at present chiefly in
the eating, drinking, and sleeping line--adding that, in his opinion,
he bore a striking resemblance to those somewha