out of
Mercer's hand, crept under the corn-bin, and, as he tried to reach it, I
saw it run out at the back, and creep down a hole in the floor boards,
one evidently made by a rat.

"Oh!" ejaculated Mercer dolefully. "There goes five shillings down that
hole. What an unlucky beggar I am!"

"Oh, he'll soon come out again," I said.

"Not he; and that's the worst of you, Burr--you will make the best of
things so. He won't come out--he'll live down there hunting the rats;
and I'm sure now that we shall never get him again, for it is the one
Magg used to have, and he has tricked me. I know it by that bit out of
its ear. It is his ferret."

"Well, you haven't paid him for it," I said, laughing. "And if he has
cheated you, I wouldn't pay."

"But I said I would," replied Mercer, shaking his head; "and one must
keep one's promises, even with cheats. But never mind; old Lom's got
the gloves, and if Magg gives me any of his nonsense, I'll thrash him,
too, eh?"

"Tea!" I cried, for just then the bell began to ring.

CHAPTER TEN.

That evening after tea, while Mercer and I were down by the gardens,
where I found that somebody had been dancing a jig on my newly-raked
beds, we heard a good deal of chattering and laughing over in the
play-field, and Burr major's voice dominating all the others so queerly
that I laughed.

"I say, isn't it rum!" said Mercer, joining in. "I hope we shan't be
like that by and by. Hodson is sometimes. There, hark!"

I listened, and Burr major was speaking sharply in a highly-pitched
voice, that was all squeak, and then it descended suddenly into a gruff
bass like a man's.

"Do you know what old Reb said he was one day?" said Mercer, wiping his
eyes, for a chance to laugh at his tyrant always afforded him the most
profound satisfaction.

"No. A dandy?"

"A hobbledehoy! and he looks it, don't he? It did make him so savage
when he heard, and he said he wasn't half such a hobbledehoy as old Reb
was, and Dicksee said he'd go and tell."

"And did he?"

"Did he? You know how my nose was swelled up."

"Of course."

"Well, that was nothing to Dicksee's. His is a nose that a tap will
swell up, and when old Eely regularly hammered till it was soft, it
looked dreadful, and when he said he'd go straight to the Doctor, Eely
hammered him again till he went down on his knees and begged Eely's
pardon, and promised to say it was done by a cricket-ball. I say, hark!
they've got som