The whole yard rang with the shouts and screams of the boys; and this might have lasted much longer if an old labouring servant had not come into the yard, and insisted that there was enough of it, driving Hodge away, and crying shame on his young masters. When Tom was let loose, he walked away into the house, as Henry supposed, to get himself washed; and James and William, being very hot, called Henry to go with them across the field into the barn, in one corner of which they had a litter of puppies. They were a long time in this barn, for after they had looked at the puppies they had a game at marbles, and Henry was much amused. William Burke was generally the quietest of the family, and almost all strangers liked him best; but he had his particular tempers, and as those tempers were never kept under by his parents, when they broke out they were very bad. James did something in the game which he did not think fair, so he got up from the ground where they were sitting or kneeling to play, kicked the marbles from him, told his brother that he was cheating, in so many plain words, and was walking quietly away, when James followed him, and seized his arm to pull him back. William resisted, and then the brothers began to wrestle; and from wrestling half playfully, they went on to wrestle in earnest. One gave the other a chance blow, and the other returned an intended one, and then they fought in good earnest, and did not stop till William had got a bloody nose; and perhaps they might not have stopped then, if Henry Fairchild had not begun to cry, running in between them, and begging them not to hurt each other any more. "Poor child!" cried James, as he drew back from William, "don't you know that we were only in play? Did you never see two boys playing before?" "Not in that way," replied Henry. "That is because you have no brother," answered James. "It is a sad thing for a boy not to have a brother." They all then left the barn, and William went to wash his nose at the pump. Whilst he was doing this, James turned over an empty trough which lay in the shade of one of the buildings in the fold-yard, and he and Henry sat down upon it; William soon came down to them. He had washed away the blood, and he looked so sulky, that anyone might have seen that he would have opened out the quarrel again with James had not Henry Fairchild been present; for, though he did not care for the little boy, yet he did not wish that he should give him a bad name to his father. Henry Fairchild was learning the best lesson he had ever had in his life amongst the unruly children of Mr. Burke; but this lesson was not to be learned only by his ears and eyes; it would not have been enough for him to have seen Tom soused in the mire, or William with his bloody nose; his very bones were to suffer in the acquirement of it, and he was to get such a fright as he had never known before.