some kind of uniform, for a bit of
gold lace would go so well with a sword. Then I stopped short, for in
all my planning there was no place for Bob Chowne, who was regularly
left out of the business.

"Oh, how stupid!" I thought directly after. "He would be the
surgeon's--his father's--assistant, and bind up everybody's wounds."

I'm afraid I was, like a great many more boys, ready to have my
imagination take fire at the idea of a fight, and never for a moment
realising what the horrors of bloodshed really were.

"Poor Bob!" I thought to myself. "He wouldn't like that, having to do
nothing but tie and sew up wounds." He was so fond of a fight that he
would want to be in it; and I concluded that we would let him fight
while the fight was going on, and have a sword and pistols, and
afterwards I could help him bandage the wounds.

Then I came back to Bigley, and began to think that, after all, it would
be very queer for him to be fighting on one side and me on the other,
and it did not seem natural, for we two had never had a serious quarrel,
though I had had many a set-to with other lads, and had twice over given
Bob Chowne black eyes, the last time when he gave me that terrible punch
on the nose, when it bled so long that we all grew frightened, and
determined to go to the doctor's, and it suddenly stopped.

I don't know how much more nonsense I should have thought if my father
had not made a movement as if to get up, and that changed the current of
my thoughts.

But he went on writing again, and this time I began watching a large
chest that stood in one corner of the room, bound with clamps of iron,
and it looked so heavy and strong that I concluded that it must be full
of ingots of silver ready to send away.

I grew tired of looking at that box, and as my fancy did not seem
disposed to run again upon fighting and defence, I sat listening to the
scratching of my father's pen and the ticking of the clock, and then to
the dull roar of the furnace, while mingled with it came the clattering
of hammers, the creaking of the great windlass, and the rushing and
plashing of falling water.

Just then there was a tap as of some one's knuckles at the door, and in
obedience to a look from my father I got up and opened it, to turn quite
red in the face, for there stood my old school-fellow about whom so much
had been said--Bigley Uggleston.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

FOREARMED AS WELL AS FOREWARNED.

"Who is it?" s