forgotten me, that is all.

"Your loving Son,
"TIM."

And Tim--such was his natural depravity--did not much care. So callous
and indifferent did he become that he ceased to be hurt when the boys
called him "Carrots." In fact he laughed. And as he no longer objected
when he was called "Carrots" the boys dropped that name, and the
shortest one survived. The boys started to call him "Tims" and in a few
months he had won their affection from the lowest fag to the highest lad
in the school.

Two years afterwards, by dint of practice and pluck he had so far
advanced that he ran second in the quarter-mile at the Sports. Of course
this was not very heroic. He was rewarded for this feat of strength with
a patent egg-boiler, which was of no sort of use to him, and, as he
discovered afterwards, of no use to anybody else. But he was exceedingly
proud of the thing and also exceedingly careful to conceal this fact
from the other boys.

He became, to sum up his attitude, less and less like Victor. But it is
not to be presumed that he was sinking into mental nothingness. He was
not perhaps quite so refined in his language as he might have been, he
used slang, and sometimes was inclined to hang his hat on the floor and
talk back. He was rather untidy in his dress. But certain compensating
qualities of the highest value were appearing in Tim. He had gathered to
himself a plentiful supply of gumption--genius is all right, but if it
comes to a slow-down gumption is better. His hatred of "swank" reached
the point of unreasoning prejudice. He made many mistakes; but depend
upon this: the man who has never made a mistake has never made anything
else worth having.

And Tim never became a great soldier, or a great sailor, or anything
great. But he had good spirits, and he concealed about his person a
heart of gold; and after he left Thetford Grammar School, boys found
that somehow the games in the old playground seemed flat and spiritless.
They said that things weren't as they used to be in Tim's time.

I have told the reader that Tim Gamelyn's father was a retired
non-commissioned officer who lived near Dublin on a small private income
and a pension. It will be seen that Tim's people did not roll in wealth
any to speak of. They owned a small farm with five cows, twenty pigs and
a flock of hens. There was beer always in the cellar, ba