Phil was amused, and somewhat pleased, to find how exactly Hugh remembered his description of the place and neighbourhood. He recognised the duck-pond under the hedge by the road-side, with the very finest blackberries growing above it, just out of reach. The church he knew, of course, and the row of chestnuts, whose leaves were just beginning to fall; and the high wall dividing the orchard from the playground. That must have been the wall on which Mr Tooke's little boy used to be placed to frighten him. It did not look so very high as Hugh had fancied it. One thing which he had never seen or heard of was the bell, under its little roof on the ridge of Mr Tooke's great house. Was it to call in the boys to school, or for an alarm? His uncle told him it might serve the one purpose in the day, and the other by night; and that almost every large farm thereabouts had such a bell on the top of the house. The sun was near its setting when they came in sight of the Crofton house. A long range of windows glittered in the yellow light, and Phil said that the lower row all belonged to the school-room;--that whole row. In the midst of his explanations Phil stopped, and his manner grew more rough than ever--with a sort of shyness in it too. It was because some of the boys were within hearing, leaning over the pales which separated the playground from the road. "I say; hollo there!" cried one. "Is that Prater you have got with you?" "Prater the second," cried another. "He could not have had his name if there had not been Prater the first." "There! There's a scrape you have got me into already!" muttered Phil. "Be a man, Phil, and bear your own share," said Mr Shaw; "and no spite, because your words come back to you!" The talk at the palings still went on, as the gig rolled quietly in the sandy by-road. "Prater!" poor Hugh exclaimed. "What a name!" "Yes; that is you," said his uncle. "You know now what your nick-name will be. Every boy has one or another: and yours might have been worse, because you might have done many a worse thing to earn it." "But the usher, uncle?" "What of him?" "He should not have told about me." "Don't call him `Prater the third,' however. Bear your own share, as I said to Phil, and don't meddle with another's." Perhaps Mr Shaw hoped that through one of the boys the usher would get a new nick-name for his ill-nature in telling tales of a little boy, before he was so much as seen by his companions. He certainly put it into their heads, whether they would make use of it or not.