before six o'clock in the morning. But it
was not a course that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with
romantic instincts and a revolver which he perceived at a glance to be
still loaded in most of its chambers. Pocket was not one of nature's
heroes, but he had an overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time to
feel how he should despise himself all his life if he bolted by the window
instead of opening the door. So he did open it, trembling but determined.
And there stood Phillida in her dressing-gown, her dark hair tumbling over
her shoulders.

"It's you!" she cried, taking the exclamation out of his mouth.

"Yes," he said, with a gust of relief; "did you think it was thieves?"

"Isn't it?" she demanded, pointing to the broken window visible through
the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.

"He took this from me," said Pocket. "I had a right to it. Take it if
you will!"

And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But
Phillida was too angry to look at revolvers.

"You had no business to break in to get it," she told him, with
considerable severity.

"I didn't! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this morning
before he went out. They're what I broke in for, and I'd a perfect right;
you know I had! And while I'm about it I thought I might as well have
this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there. And
I'm glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in the
house of one of the greatest villains alive!"

The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were
all out in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his indignation,
the girl's eyes flashing hers.

"I begin to think my uncle was right," said she. "This is the act of what
he said you were, if anything could be."

"He lied to you, and he's been lying to me!"

"He may have been justified."

"You wait till you hear all he's done! I don't mean taking my revolver
from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I'd done with
it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if he
couldn't trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But that
isn't the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my own poor
people who may think me dead----"

"Well?"

There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was breaking
with his great grief and grievance.

"He took it out himsel