ay--"

"And was scalped all the way back, I suppose."

"I was, John. Try it yourself."

"I did, a month after I came."

"Oh! and you never told me."

"No, why should I?"

It had not had for him the quality of bodily peril. It was somehow far
less alarming. He had started with fear, but was of no mind to confess.
They rode on in silence, until at last she said. "I hope you won't fight
that boy again."

"Oh," he said, "I didn't mind it so very much."

She was hinting that he would again be beaten. "But I minded, John. I
hated it."

He would say no more. He had now had, as concerned Tom, three advisers.
He kept his own counsel, with the not unusual reticence of a boy. He did
not wish to be pitied on account of what he did not consider defeat, and
wanted no one to discuss it. He was better pleased when a week later the
English groom talked to him after the boxing-lesson. "That fellow, Tom,
told me about your slapping him. He said that he didn't want to lick you
if you hadn't hit him."

"It's not a thing I want to talk about, Sam. I had to hit him and I
didn't know how; that's all. Put on the gloves again."

"There, that'll do, sir. You're light on your pins, and he's sort of
slow. If you ever have to fight him, just remember that and keep cool and
keep moving."

The young boxing-tutor was silently of opinion that John Penhallow would
not be satisfied until he had faced Tom again. John made believe, as we
say, that he had no such desire. He had, however, long been caressed and
flattered into the belief that he was important, and was, in his uncle's
army phrase, to be obeyed and respected accordingly by inferiors. His
whole life now for many months had, however, contributed experiences
contradictory to his tacitly accepted boy-views. Sometimes in youth the
mental development and conceptions of what seem desirable in life appear
to make abrupt advances without apparent bodily changes. More wholesomely
and more rarely at the plastic age characteristics strengthen and mind
and body both gather virile capacity. When John Penhallow met his cousin
on his first arrival, he was in enterprise, vigour, general good sense
and normal relation to life, really far younger than Leila. In knowledge,
mind and imagination, he was far in advance. In these months he had
passed her in the race of life. He felt it, but in many ways was also
dimly aware that Leila was less expressively free in word and action,
sometimes to his surpr