I soon mended of my knocks, and the very next day was ruffling it to my lessons with a new self-confidence that made nothing of possessing the world. Dunberry was no longer a Siberia to me, but a conquered country full of breezy possibilities. I should have welcomed the prospect of an attack; but no one interfered with me. On the contrary, awed and covert glances greeted me on my way past the school. I dropped a book. An obsequious little courtier scurried to pick it up for me. The news of the fight had got abroad, it was evident, and Harry was no longer the cock of the walk. From this moment, with other than the youth of Dunberry, I am afraid, my position was secured. I hope I took no base advantage of the knowledge; yet I won’t say but I might have if Mr. Sant had not been at my back to prevent it. “Don’t forget you fought for a principle,” he would remind me. “It’s no manner of Christian use to turn out a bully that you may usurp his place.” To prove to me that boxing was not the whole duty of a gentleman, and to school me from presuming on any idea of indulgence because of my victory, he rather put the screw on in my education, and for a time was something of a martinet on questions of study and discipline. I was hurt, and a little bit rebellious at first; but soon, having a fair reason of my own, came to recognize his consistency. During this time, and for some weeks after the fight, I saw next to nothing of Harry Harrier. He kept out of my way, sulking and grieving, though he attended school--with phenomenal punctuality, too, I believe--regularly. His father, I heard from old Jacob, had been very savage over his beating, and had dressed him well for it. I was furious when I was told, and wanted Mr. Sant to complain to the Squire; but, before he could do so, something happened which made any complaint futile. A new steward, a Draco of a man, was appointed to the Court, and one day, shortly after his arrival, lo and behold! there was the gamekeeper handcuffed, and being carried off to Ipswich gaol in a tax-cart by the officers of the law. It had been discovered that for years he had been in collusion with a gang of poachers, and in the end he had been watched, and caught _in flagranti delicto_. His wife followed him to the county town, and devoted most of her savings, poor woman, to his defence, but without avail. He was convicted and transported, and I may as well say at once that that was the end of him so far as his family was concerned, for he never turned up again. While the trial was pending, Harry--it is not, under all the circumstances, to be wondered at--gave the schoolhouse a wide berth; but, after his father had been sentenced and their home broken up, to the surprise of every one he put in an appearance there again, coming dogged and punctual to a task which must have grown nothing less than a perpetual ordeal to him. We did not, in truth, know the strength of