f, both of you, and I'll write a
letter for those gloves to-night."

We left him with our hearts beating high.

"I don't mind my face swelling a bit now," said Mercer.

"I should like to begin learning to-morrow," I said, and then we were
both silent for a few minutes, till Mercer turned round with a queer
laugh on his swollen face.

"I say," he cried, with a chuckle, "I wonder whether old Dicksee will
cry cock-a-doodle-doo next time when we've done."

"Let's wait and see," said I; and that night I dreamed that I was a
wind-mill, and that every time my sails, which were just the same as
arms, went round, they came down bang on Dicksee's head, and made him
yell.

I woke up after that dream, to find it was broad daylight, and crept out
of bed to look at my face in the glass, and shrank away aghast, for my
lip was more swollen, and there was a nasty dark look under my eye.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

I stood gazing into the little looking-glass with my spirits sinking
down and down in that dreary way in which they will drop with a boy who
wakes up in the morning with some trouble resting upon his shoulders
like so much lead.

I was more stiff and sore, too, at first waking, and all this combined
to make me feel so miserable, that I began to think about home and my
mother, and what would be the consequences if I were to dress quickly,
slip out, and go back.

She would be so glad to see me again, I thought, that she would not be
cross; and when I told her how miserable I was at the school, she would
pity me, and it would be all right again.

I was so elated by the prospect, and--young impostor that I was--so glad
of the excuse which the marks upon my face would form to a doting
mother, that I began to dress quickly, and had got as far as I could
without beginning to splash in the water and rattle the little white jug
and basin, when the great obstacle to my evasion came before me with
crushing power, and I sat on my bed gazing blankly before me.

For a terrible question had come for an answer, and it was this:

"What will uncle say?"

And as I sat on the edge of my bed, his handsome, clearly-cut face, with
the closely-cropped white hair and great grey moustache, was there
before me, looking at me with a contemptuous sneer, which seemed to say,
"You miserable, despicable young coward! Is this the way you fulfil
your promise of trying to be a man, worthy of your poor father, who was
a brave soldier and a gentleman?