'Then you won't repeat what you said the other day?' interrupted Taylor eagerly. 'What do you take me for? I should be a cad if I did. Besides, I can see now that I have no business to blame you for what----No, I'm not going to say anything,' he whispered, in answer to Taylor's frown. 'Let every tub stand on its own bottom, I say.' 'All right, old fellow, we'll let the matter drop, then, and, mind, mum is the word between us.' 'Right you are,' said Warren, and then he ran off to join Horace, for he had drawn Taylor aside to say this, as neither of them wished their talk to be overheard. Whatever it might be that Warren had heard concerning the antecedents of Taylor's family, he could not be more sensitive upon the point than Warren was over his inability to fight without danger to his life. For a schoolboy to be told that he cannot stand up in a fair, square fight without bringing the danger to his antagonist of being charged with manslaughter, had brought such a shock to the boy that it was this, rather than the effects of the fall, that made his father forbid him going to school the previous day. The lad had wondered how he was to get out of finishing the fight already begun; and it demanded a greater amount of courage on his part to walk up to Taylor and ask him to let the matter end where it was, than to stand up before him for a turn at fisticuffs, even with the almost dead certainty of getting the worst of it. He had told his secret to Horace as he came along, glad of a confidant who would understand his difficulty; and Horace had counselled that he should make up his quarrel with Taylor, even though it involved throwing him over, if Taylor should make the demand. Warren shook his head. 'I shan't do that,' he said. 'I think we shall find another way, and you can tell the fellows we have agreed to cry quits. But don't tell them I can't stand up and fight, for fear the other fellow should get sent to prison afterwards. That's the dreadful part about it, and that's what my father says would be pretty sure to follow. What an awful muff I must be!' sighed the boy, 'worse than any girl!' 'But look here, you've just done something that took a lot more courage of another sort,' said Horace, who was ready to make a hero of his new friend for managing the affair with Taylor without throwing him over. 'You did a plucky thing too, speaking to me in the face of all the class.' 'Oh, that was just part of the fight that is in me. I believe I was born a fighter, and now for the sake of other people I must be mum, and go through the world like a girl.' 'I don't know anything about girls; I never had a sister, so I can't tell what they are like, but I know you will have plenty of the other sort of courage when it is wanted, so you need not mind much, if you can't fight with your fists.' They had reached the crowd of boys near the gate now, and two or three pressed eagerly forward, to know when and where the fight was to come off.