In silence they reached the village. It was not a village of portentous magnitude, since it only contained thirteen cottages and one shop, the shop being the smallest cottage in the place. The only point in its favour was that it was the nearest commercial establishment to Mecklemburg House. The proprietor was a Mrs. Huffham, an ancient lady, with a very bad temper, and a still worse reputation--among the boys--for honesty in the direction of weights and measures. It must be conceded that they could have had no worse opinion of her than she had of them. "Them young warmints, if they wants to buy a thing they wants ninety ounces to the pound, and if they wants to pay for it, they wants you to take eightpence for a shilling--oh, I knows 'em!" So Mrs. Huffham declared. At the door of this emporium parley was held. Ellis suddenly remembered something. "I say, I owe old Mother Huffham two-and-three." So far as the gathering mist and the soaking rain enabled one to see, Dick's countenance wore a lugubrious expression. "Well, what of that?" "Well"--Dick Ellis hesitated--"so long as that brute Stephen isn't about the place I don't mind. He called out after me the other day, that if I didn't pay he'd take the change out of me some other way." The Stephen referred to was Mrs. Huffham's grandson, a stalwart young fellow of twenty-one or two, who drove the carrier's cart to Kingston and back. His ideas on pecuniary obligations were primitive. Having learned from experience that it was vain to expect Mr. Fletcher to pay his pupils' debts at the village shop, he had an uncomfortable way of taking it out of refractory debtors in the shape of personal chastisement. Endless disputes had arisen in consequence. Mr. Fletcher had on more than one occasion threatened the summary Stephen with the terrors of the law; but Stephen had snapped his fingers at Mr. Fletcher, advising him to pay his own debts, lest worse things happened to him. Then Mr. Fletcher had forbidden Mrs. Huffham to give credit to the boys; but Mrs. Huffham was an obstinate old lady, and treated the headmaster with no more deference than her grandson. Finally, Mr. Fletcher had forbidden the boys to deal with Mrs. Huffham; but in spite of his prohibition an active commerce was carried on, and on more than one occasion the irate Stephen had been moved to violence. "You should have stopped at home," was Wheeler's not unreasonable reply to Dick's confession. "I don't owe her anything. I don't see what you wanted to come for, anyhow, if you haven't got any money and you owe her two-and-three."