Again he spoke—proclaimed how Jabez had magnanimously declined to single out his cowardly antagonist; and that the boy, whoever he might be, had to thank his most honourable victim that he was not ignominiously expelled. Then quietly but emphatically he pronounced the decision of the trustees that instant expulsion should follow any or every repetition of the offence which had called them together—not only the expulsion of the ringleaders, but of all concerned; and that even a fair fight between a Grammar School, and a Blue-coat boy should be visited with suspension pending enquiry, the offender to be expelled whether from school or College. “Good lad, Jabez!—good lad!” said Joshua Brookes to him, as George Pilkington helped his limping steps from the room. On the broad flat step outside the door they encountered big Ben Travis, who caught the hand of Jabez in a rough grip, with the exclamation, “Give us your fist, my young buck! You’ve more pluck in your finger than that carroty Aspinall in his whole carcase, the mean cur! an’ look you, my lad, if any of them set on you again, I’ll stand by and see fair play; or I’ll fight for you if it’s a big chap, or my name’s not Ben Travis.” “Who talks of fighting? Haven’t you had enough for one while, you great raw-boned brute? You’d better keep your ready fists in your pockets Travis, if you don’t want to be kicked out of school!” After which gruff reminder Joshua left them, and Jabez went back to the College with one more friend in the world; but that friend was not Laurence Aspinall. He, smarting under a sense of obligation, shrunk away to bite his nails and vent his spleen in private, conscious that he was shunned by his classmates, and despised by honest Ben Travis. As months and seasons sped onwards, they plucked the hairs from Simon Clegg’s crown, and left a bald patch to tell of care or coming age; they stole the roundness from Bessy’s figure, the hope from her heart and eyes. There was less vigour in the beat of her batting-wand, less elasticity in her step. The periodical holidays and cheering visits of Jabez were the only pleasant breaks in the monotonous life of the Cleggs. Beyond the knowledge obtained at the billeting office in King Street that Tom Hulme had entered the army and gone abroad with his regiment, no tidings of the self-exiled soldier had come to them. In the great vortex of war his name had been swallowed up and lost. But she never said “Ay” to Matthew Cooper, though he waited and waited, smoking his Sunday pipe by the fireside even till his own Molly was old enough to have a sweetheart, and to want to leave her father’s crowded hearth for a quieter one of her own.