"Should you? You are a good feller, then! I mean to pay him off for what he did for me the other day. I wouldn't minded being turned out of school. I rather liked the idea; but the old muttonhead got me up before all the school, and read me such a lecture! He thinks there isn't anybody in the world but him." "The lecture didn't hurt you," suggested Harry. "No; it didn't. But that warn't the worst of it." "What else?" "My father give me a confounded licking when I got home. I haven't done smarting yet. But I will pay 'em for it all." "You mean Squire Walker." "And the old man, too." "If I only had a father, I wouldn't mind letting him lick me now and then," replied Harry, to whom home seemed a paradise, though he had never understood it; and a father and mother, though coarse and brutal, his imagination pictured as angels. "My father would learn you better than that in a few days," said Ben, who did not appreciate his parents, especially when they held the rod. Harry relapsed into musing again. He thought how happy he should have been in Ben's place. A home, a father, a mother! We value most what we have not; and if the pauper boy could have had the blessings which crowned his reckless companion's lot, it seemed as though he would have been contented and happy. His condescension in regard to the flogging now and then was a sincere expression of feeling. "What's old Walker been doing to you, Harry?" asked Ben, suspecting the cause of the other's gloom. "He is going to send me to Jacob Wire's to live." "Whew! That is a good one! To die, you mean; Harry, I wouldn't stand that." "I don't mean to." "That's right; I like your spunk. What do you mean to do?" Harry was not prepared to answer this question. He possessed a certain degree of prudence, and though it was easy to declare war against so powerful an enemy as Squire Walker, it was not so easy to carry on the war after it was declared. The overseer was a bigger man to him than the ogre in "Puss in Boots." Probably his imagination largely magnified the grandeur of the squire's position, and indefinitely multiplied the resources at his command. "What do you mean to do?" repeated Ben, who for some reason or other took a deep interest in Harry's affairs. "I don't know. I would rather die than go; but I don't know how I can help myself," answered the poor boy, gloomily. "I do." Harry looked up with interest and surprise. Ben sympathized with him in his trials, and his heart warmed towards him. "What, Ben?" "I daresn't tell you now," replied Ben after a short pause. "Why not?" "Can you keep a secret?" "Of course I can. Did I ever blow on you?" "No, you never did, Harry. You are a first rate feller, and I like you. But you see, if you should blow on me now, you would spoil my kettle of fish, and your own, too." "But I won't, Ben." "Promise me solemnly." "Solemnly," repeated Harry. "Well, then, I will get you out of the scrape as nice as a cotton hat." "How?"