“I do, then! Come, Mr. Channing, though you are a senior, and can put me up to Pye for punishment upon any false plea that you choose,” answered a tall fellow, Pierce senior, who was chiefly remarkable for getting into fights, and was just now unusually friendly with Mark Galloway, at whose desk he sat. Quick as lightning, Tom Channing turned and faced him. “Speak out what you have to say,” cried he; “no hints.” “Whew!” retorted Pierce senior, “do you think I am afraid? I say that Arthur Channing stole the note lost by old Galloway.” Tom, in uncontrollable temper, raised his hand and struck him. One half-minute’s struggle, nothing more, and Pierce senior was sprawling on the ground, while Tom Channing’s cheek and nose were bleeding. Gaunt had stepped in between them. “I stop this,” he said. “Pierce, get up! Don’t lie there like a floundering donkey. Channing, what possessed you to forget yourself?” “You would have done the same, Gaunt, had the insult been offered to you. Let the fellow retract his words, or prove them.” “Very good. That is how you ought to have met it at first,” said Gaunt. “Now, Mr. Pierce, can you make good your assertion?” Pierce had floundered up, and was rubbing one of his long legs, which had doubled under him in the fall, while his brother, Pierce junior, was collecting an armful of scattered books, and whispering prognostications of parental vengeance in prospective; for, so surely as Pierce senior fell into a fight at school, to the damage of face or clothes, so surely was it followed up by punishment at home. “If you want proof, go to Butterby at the police station, and get it from him,” sullenly replied Pierce, who owned a sulky temper as well as a pugnacious one. “Look here,” interrupted Mark Galloway, springing to the front: “Pierce was a fool to bring it out in that way, but I’ll speak up now it has come to this. I went into my uncle’s, this morning, at nine o’clock, and there was he, shut in with Butterby. Butterby was saying that there was no doubt the theft had been committed by Arthur Channing. Mind, Channing,” Mark added, turning to Tom, “I am not seconding the accusation on my own score; but, that Butterby said it I’ll declare.” “Pshaw! is that all?” cried Tom Channing, lifting his head with a haughty gesture, and not condescending to notice the blood which trickled from his cheek. “You must have misunderstood him, boy.” “No, I did not,” replied Mark Galloway. “I heard him as plainly as I hear you now.” “It is hardly likely that Butterby would say that before you, Galloway,” observed Gaunt. “Ah, but he didn’t see I was there, or my uncle either,” said Mark. “When he is reading his newspaper of a morning, he can’t bear a noise, and I always go into the room as quiet as mischief. He turned me out again pretty quick, I can tell you; but not till I had heard Butterby say that.”