o much the
greater hero he!

No wonder his best friends called him disparaging names; he was living up
to the hardest of them now, and he with asthma on him as it was! But the
will was on him too, the obstinate and reckless will, and the way lay
handy in the shape of a row of Park chairs which Pocket had just passed
against the iron palings. He went back to them, mounted on the first
chair, wedged his bag between two of the spikes, set foot on the back of
the chair, and somehow found himself on the other side without rent or
scratch. Then he listened; but not a step could he hear. So then the
cunning dog put his handkerchief through the palings and wiped the grit
from the chair on which he had stood. And they called him a conscientious
ass at school!

But then none of these desperate deeds were against his conscience, and
they had all been thrust on Pocket Upton by circumstances over which he
had lost control when the last train went without him from St. Pancras.
They did not prevent him from kneeling down behind the biggest bush that
he could find, before curling up underneath it; neither did his prayers
prevent him from thinking--even on his knees--of his revolver, nor yet--by
the force of untimely association--of the other revolvers in the Chamber of
Horrors. He saw those waxen wretches huddled together in ghastly groups,
but the thought of them haunted him less than it might have done in a
feather bed; he had his own perils and adventures to consider now. One
thing, however, did come of the remembrance; he detached the leather strap
he wore as a watch-guard. And used it to strap a pin-fire revolver,
loaded in every chamber, to his wrist instead.

That was the last but one of the silly boy's proceedings under the bush;
the last of all was to drain the number-one draught prescribed by Bompas
in the morning, and to fling away the phial. The stuff was sweet and
sticky in the mouth, and Pocket felt a singular and most grateful warmth
at his extremities as he curled up in his overcoat. It was precisely then
that he heard a measured tread approaching, and held his breath until it
had passed without a pause. Yet the danger was still audible when the boy
dropped off, thinking no more about it, but of Mr. Coverley and Charles
Peace and his own people down in Leicestershire.

HIS PEOPLE

It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him.
They had been talking about him at the very