He was the most peculiar chap that ever came to Merivale, not excepting even Mason, who shot the Doctor’s wife’s parrot with a catapult, and, after he had been flogged, offered to stuff it in the face of the whole school, and nearly got expelled. Freckles was so called owing to his skin, which was simply a complicated pattern much like what you can see in any map of the Grecian Archipelago. This arose, he thought, from his having been born in Australia. Anyway, it was rum to see; and so were his hands, which had reddish down on the backs. His eyes were, also reddish--a sort of mixture of red and gray specks, and they glimmered like a cat’s when he was angry, which was often. His real name was Maine, and he had no side. His father had made a big fortune selling wool at Sydney, and his grandfather was one of the last people to be transported to Botany Bay through no fault of his own. After he had been on a convict ship five years a chap at home confessed on his death-bed that he had done the thing Maine’s grandfather was transported for. So they naturally let Maine’s grandfather go free; and he was so much annoyed about it that he never came back home again, but married a farmer’s daughter near Sydney and settled out there for good. Maine didn’t think great things of England, and was always talking about the Australian forests of blue gum-trees and bush, and sneering rather at the size of our forests round Merivale, though they were good ones. He never joined in games, but roamed away alone for miles and miles into the country on half-holidays, and trespassed with a cheek I never saw equalled. He could run like a hare--especially about half a mile or so, which, as he explained to me, is just about a distance to blow a keeper. Certainly, though often chased, he was never caught and never recognized, owing to things he did which he had learned in Australia and copied from famous bushrangers. His great hope some day was to be a bushranger himself, and he practised in a quiet way every Saturday afternoon, making it a rule to go out of bounds always. His get-up was fine. My name is Tomkins, called “Nubby” because I happen to have a rather large sort of nose, and, being fond of the country and not keen on games, Maine rather took to me, and after I had sworn on crossed knives not to say a word to a soul (which I never did till Freckles left) he told me his secrets and showed me his things. If you’d seen Freckles starting for an excursion you wouldn’t have said there was anything remarkable about him; but really he was armed to the teeth, and had everything a bushranger would be likely to want in a quiet place like Merivale. Down his leg was the barrel of an air-gun, strong enough to kill any small thing like a cat at twenty-five yards; the rest of the gun was arranged inside the lining of his coat, and the slugs it fired he carried loose in his trousers-pockets. Round his waist he had a leather belt he got from a sailor for a pound.