her, please! He won't fight any more,
will you, Dan?"

"I am not promising that," answered Dan, sturdily. "I won't stand shoving
and knocking, not even to keep my place here."

"O Dan!" cried Freddy, in dismay at such an assertion. "Why, you said you
would work day and night to stay at Saint Andrew's!"

"Work, yes," replied Dan, gruffly. "I don't mind work, but I won't ever
play lickspittle."

"And is that the way ye'd be talking before his reverence?" broke in
Brother Tim, indignantly. "Get out of the infirmary this minute, Dan
Dolan; for it's the devil's own pride that is on yer lips and in yer
heart, God forgive me for saying it."

"We'll settle this later," said Father Regan, quietly. "Go down to my
study, Dan, and wait for me. I have a message for Freddy from his uncle."

"O Dan, Dan!" (There was a sob in the younger boy's voice as he felt all
this parting might mean.) "I'll--I'll miss you dreadfully, Dan!"

"Don't!" said Dan, gripping his little comrade's hand. "I ain't worth
missing. I'm glad I came, anyhow, to say good-bye and good-luck, Freddy!"
And he turned away at the words, with something shining in his blue eyes
that Father Regan knew was not all defiance.

It was a long wait in the study. Dan had plenty of time to think, and his
thoughts were not very cheerful. He felt he had lost his chance,--the
chance that had been to him like the sudden opening of a gate in the grim
stone wall of circumstances that had surrounded him,--a gate beyond which
stretched free, sunlit paths to heights of which he had never dreamed. He
had lost his chance; for a free scholarship at Saint Andrew's depended on
good conduct and observance of rules as well as study; and Dan felt he had
doubly and trebly forfeited his claim. But he would not whine. Perhaps it
was only the plucky spirit of the street Arab that filled his breast,
perhaps something stronger and nobler that steadied his lip and kindled
his eye, as he looked around the spacious, book-lined room, and realized
all that he was losing--had lost. For Dan loved his books,--the
hard-earned scholarship proved it. Many a midnight hour had found him,
wrapped in his worn blankets, studying by the light of a flaring
candle-end stuck perilously on his bedpost, after good Aunt Win had
thriftily put out the lamp, and believed Danny was sound asleep
preparatory to a start on his beat at break of day.

"One of the brightest, clearest, quickest minds I ever knew," Dan's
teache