It must have been that his facial aspect, heightened, of course, by his winged straw hat, aided him materially in the expression of his fears with regard to my safety; for this cherubic Agamemnon carried every point in that council of war; and it was unanimously resolved that I should change my quarters. Accordingly, the next night, I was entertained in the stable of another of my school-fellows, residing at the remotest corner of the district. Now I do not want to be considered fastidious or luxurious in my tastes; but I must own to a very loud complaint, entered the morning afterward, against the comparative discomforts of this new lodging. There was very little hay in the stable to which I had been transferred; and the boards, moreover, were very hard indeed. It may have been an improper spirit in which I made the remark; but I went back again to the first school-fellow who has figured in this narrative, and told him if a boy hadn’t a respectable barn to invite a friend to, he needn’t think _I_ was going to be his guest,--that’s all! After watching, for a moment, the impression of my words upon my friend, I said furthermore, that I was going to strike out for myself, as I was growing tired of the monotony of hay-mows and bread-and-butter, anyways. I wanted a change. Then came one of the most impressive moments that I shall have to chronicle in these memoirs; for, as soon as I had finished speaking, my friend slapped me vigorously on the back, making at the same time, with excited shrillness, this observation, “Hey!”--which, being a common juvenile exclamation, had, of course, no jocose allusion to the principal subject of my discourse. “Hey! bully for you!” continued my enthusiastic friend and school-fellow, as soon as he could get his breath, which the suddenness of his lucky thought had evidently taken away. “Hey! that’s just what _I_’d do. I’d go out into the world, and seek my fortune, like the boys in the story-books; and,” said he, suddenly changing his tone and manner to those of the most excessive gravity and deliberation,--“and, that you needn’t be without means to help you along, take these!” Whereupon he drew forth from his capacious trousers pocket, and placed in my hand, five large copper cents, which at first had the appearance of so many oysters fried in batter, so girt about and covered were they with fragments of bread-and-butter, deposited, I suppose, in the course of my friend’s entire catering. It was, indeed, as he assured me, his whole cash capital; but he would not hear to my scruples at taking it. More earnest or impressive about it, or, under the circumstances, more self-denying and truly generous, he could not have been if he had been giving the world away. * * * * *