“What’s the matter with your leg? You’re limping!” “He kicked her! I saw him kick at her ankle!” Bessy burst out, pouring forth the tale unrestrained. “I tried to stop him and—and—” “And then he hit you?” asked Johnny, not so white in the cheeks now, but whiter than ever about the mouth. “Yes; but it was mother most!” and Bessy wept afresh. Perhaps his evenings of disappointment had chastened Johnny’s impatience. He knew that the man was out of reach now, and he forced his fury down. In ten minutes he knew the whole thing, between Bessy’s outpourings and Nan’s tearful admissions. “When is he coming back?” They did not know—probably he would be late, as usual. “But don’t go doing anything hasty, Johnny,” Nan implored; “I’m so afraid of you doing something rash! It’s not much, really—I’m a bit upset, but—” “I’ll have to think about this,” Johnny said, with such calmness that Nan felt somewhat reassured, though Bessy was inwardly afraid. “I’m going out for an hour.” He strode away to the Institute, walking by instinct, and seeing nothing till he was under the lettered lamp. He went to the dressing-room and hurried into his flannels. In the gymnasium the instructor, a brawny sergeant of grenadiers, was watching some lads on the horizontal bar. Johnny approached him with a hesitating request for a “free spar.” “Free spar, my lad?” said the sergeant. “What’s up? Gettin’ cheeky? Want to give me a hidin’?” “No, sergeant,” Johnny answered. “Not such a fool as that. But I never had a free spar with a man much heavier than myself, and—and I just want to try, that’s all!” There was a comprehending twinkle about the sergeant’s eyes. “Right,” he said; “you’re givin’ me near two stone—that’s if you’re a bit over eleven. Fetch the gloves.” At another time Johnny would never have conceived the impudence of asking the sergeant—once champion of the army—for a free spar. Even a “light” spar with the sergeant was something of an undertaking, wherein one was apt to have both hands full, and a bit over. But the lad had his reasons now. He dashed at the professor with a straight lead, and soon the blows were going like hail on a window-pane. The sergeant stood like a rock, and Johnny’s every rush was beaten back as by hammer-blows on the head. But he came again fresh and eager, and buzzed his master merrily about the head, getting in a very respectable number of straight drives, such as would knock an ordinary man down, though the sergeant never winked; and bringing off one on the “mark” that _did_ knock out a grunt, much as a punch in that region will knock one out of a squeaking doll. “Steady,” the sergeant called after two long rounds had been sparred. “You’ll get stiff if you keep on at that rate, my lad, and _that’s_ not what you want, I reckon!” This last with a grin. “You haven’t been boxin’ regular you know, just lately.”