thered and half-blinded himself
with a dense cloud of flour, with which the tube had been entirely
filled.

Bogey and Tinker, as usual, had been the real authors of this new
atrocity, but Figgins felt convinced that the guilt lay at the door of
Mole, on whom he turned for vengeance.

"Villain!" he cried, "this is another of your tricks; it's the last
straw. I'll bear it no longer; take that."

As Mr. Figgins spoke, he struck the venerable Mole a sounding whack
over the bald part of the cranium with the instrument of harmony.

Mole sprang upon his legs with astonishing alacrity, and, seizing
Figgins by the throat, commenced shaking him.

A ferocious struggle ensued, among the remonstrances of the spectators,
but, before they could interfere, it ended by both combatants coming
down heavily and at their full length on the temporary dinner-table,
and thereby breaking not a few plates, bottles, and glasses.

Helped to rise and seated on separate camp-stools, some distance apart,
the two former friends, but now mortal foes, as soon as they could get
their breath, sat fiercely shaking fists and hurling strong adjectives
at each other.

"I'll have it out of you, you old villain!" cried Mole.

"And I'll have it out of you, you old rascal!" shrieked Figgins.

"We'll both have it out," added the tutor, "and the sooner the better.
Name your place and your weapons."

"Here," answered Figgins, pointing to an open space before him, "and my
weapon is the sword."

"And mine's the pistol," said Mole. "I'll fight with that, and you with
your sword."

"Agreed," said the excited Figgins, quite forgetting the
impracticability of such an arrangement and the disadvantages it would
give him.

Figgins had a battered sabre of the light curved, Turkish make, and
Mole rejoiced in the possession of a very old-fashioned pistol.

Mole gave the latter to Girdwood, who volunteered to be his second, and
who took care to put nothing in more dangerous than gunpowder.

"Now we're about to see a duel upon a quite original principle," cried
Jack to his friends. "I don't think either of them can hurt the other
much. I'll be your second, Figgins, my boy."

"All right. I take up my position here," cried the orphan, stationing
himself under a tree near the brook.

"I shall stand here," said Mole, stopping at about half a dozen paces
from him.

The orphan looked as though he intended to bolt behind the tree if Mole
fired.

"Well, Master H