s in my own estimation, and I shall try and make a fresh start
when I am about again."

"I am very glad to hear it," Edgar said warmly. "I am sure it must be
very much more pleasant to be liked by everyone than to be disliked; and
one is just as easy as the other."

"I don't know that I ever thought of it before," Condor said, "but I
suppose it must be. I will try the experiment when I get up. I shall
feel very small among the others."

"I don't see why you should. You did all that you could, and no one
could have done better who had not been taught as I have, and I am sure
that no one will think the least degree the worse of you because you had
no chance with me. Why, I thrashed a couple of ruffians in Alexandria,
armed with knives, in a quarter of the time that it took me to beat
you."

"At any rate I shall know better in future," Condor said, with a poor
attempt to smile with his swollen lips. "I have learned not to judge
from appearances. Who would have thought that a fellow brought up in
Egypt would have been able to fight like a professional pugilist. You
said that you had been a couple of years at school in England, but that
didn't go for much. We have all been at school in England, and yet not
many of us know much of boxing. How was it that you came to learn?"

"Well, you see that there is a very rough population in
Alexandria--Greek, Maltese, and Italian, in fact the scum of the
Mediterranean--and my father, who is a very sensible man, thought that
the knowledge of how to use my fists well might be of much greater value
to me than anything else I could learn in England, so he asked my uncle,
with whom I lived when I was at school, to get me the best masters in
boxing that he could find. I got to be very fond of it, and worked very
hard. I had three lessons a week all the time I was at school, and the
last year changed my master three times, and so got all their favourite
hits. Of course I used to get knocked about, for some boxers can't help
hitting hard, and to the end I used to get punished pretty heavily,
because though I might hit them as often as they hit me, they were able
to hit much harder than I was, but I fancy now that they would find it
pretty hard work to knock me out of time. My father used to say that
being really a good boxer kept a man or a boy out of trouble. A man who
knows that he can fight well can afford to be good-tempered and put up
with things that another man wouldn't, and if he i