ghastly, terrible, damning truth that he was a Coward. He said that he
had hidden the fearful fact for all these years within his guilty
bosom and that now it had emerged and convicted him. He lived in
subconscious terror of the Snake, and in its presence--nay even in
that of its counterfeit presentment--he was a gibbering, lunatic
coward. Such, at least, was her dimly realized conception resultant
upon the boy's bald, stammering confession.

But how could her dear Dammy be a _coward_--the vilest thing on earth!
He who was willing to fight anyone, ride anything, go anywhere, act
anyhow. Dammy the boxer, fencer, rider, swimmer. Absurd! Think of the
day "the Cads" had tried to steal their boat from them when they were
sailing it on the pond at Revelmead. There had been five of them, two
big and three medium. Dam had closed the eye of one of them, cut the
lip of another, and knocked one of the smaller three weeping into the
dust.

They had soon cleared off and flung stones until Dam had started
running for them and then they had fled altogether.

Think of the time when she set fire to the curtains. Why, he feared no
bull, no dog, no tramp in England.

A coward! Piffle.

And yet he had screamed and kicked and cried--yes _cried_--as he had
shouted that it was under his foot and moving out. Rum! _Very_ rum!

On the day that Dam left Monksmead for school Lucille wept till she
could weep no more. Life for the next few years was one of
intermittent streaks of delirious joy and gloomy grief, vacation time
when he was at Monksmead and term time when he was at school. All the
rest of the world weighed as a grain of dust against her hero, Dam.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SNAKE'S "MYRMIDON".

For a couple of years and more, in the lower School at Wellingborough,
Damocles de Warrenne, like certain States, was happy in that he had no
history. In games rather above the average, and in lessons rather
below it, he was very popular among his fellow "squeakers" for his
good temper, modesty, generous disposition, and prowess at football
and cricket.

Then, later, dawned the day when from this comfortable high estate a
common adder, preserved in spirits of wine, was the cause of his
downfall and Bully Harberth the means of his reinstatement....

One afternoon Mr. Steynker, the Science Master, for some reason and
without preliminary mention of his intent, produced a bottled specimen
of a snake. He entered the room with the thing