Now Jarnley began to taste the sweets of revenge. More than one kick, hard and surreptitious, nearly sent the victim clean off the form, and the bright idea which occurred to Jarnley, of fixing a pin to the toe of his boot had to be abandoned, for the cogent reason that neither he nor any of his immediate neighbourhood could produce the pin. Meanwhile the master in charge lounged in the big desk, blissfully reading. "Look here, Cetchy," whispered Jarnley, having varied the entertainment with a few tweaks of his victim's wool. "Turn round, d'you hear: put your finger on that." "That" being a penholder held across the top of one of the inkwells let into the desk. "Put it on, d'you hear. I'll let you off any more if you do. No--press hard." For Anthony had begun to obey orders, but gingerly. Once more was Jarnley digging his own grave, so to say. The black finger was now held down upon the round penholder, and of course what followed was a foregone conclusion. Its support suddenly withdrawn, knuckle deep went that unlucky digit into the well, but with such force that a very fountain of ink squirted upward, to splash down, a long running smudge, right across the sheet of foolscap which Jarnley had just covered, thereby rendering utterly useless the results of nearly half an hour's work. This was too much. Reaching forward, the bully gripped the perpetrator of this outrage by the wool where it ended over the nape of the neck, and literally plucked out a wisp thereof. "I'll kill you for this, you black devil," he said, in a snarling whisper. But the reply was as startling as it was unexpected. Maddened by the acute pain, all the savage within him aroused, and utterly regardless of consequences, the Zulu boy swung round his arm like a flail, hitting Jarnley full across the face with a smack that resounded through the room, producing a dead and pin-dropping silence, as every head came round to see what had happened. "What's all this?" cried the furious voice of the master in charge, looking quickly up. "Come out, you two boys. Come out at once." Then, as the two delinquents stood up to come out of their places, a titter rippled through the whole room, for Jarnley's red and half scared, half furious countenance was further ornamented by a great black smear where his smiter's inky hand had fallen. Now the Reverend Richard Clay was hot of temper, and his method under such circumstances as these short and effectual, viz.: to chastise the offenders first and institute enquiry afterwards, or not at all. Even during the time taken by these two to leave their places and stand before him, he had flung open the lid of the great desk, and jerked forth the cane always kept there; a long supple, well-hardened cane, well burnt at the end. "Fighting during school time, were you?" he said. "Hold up your coat." "Please sir, he shied a lot of ink over my work," explained Jarnley in desperation. Anthony the while said nothing.