e him a black eye Cywil dear?" asked Betty
eagerly. Her "r's" had a way of rolling themselves into "w's" whenever
she was excited.

They were at the wicket-gate now, and Cyril slackened his speed, and
looked over his shoulder. No one was in sight.

"Oh, I will do!" he said boldly. "I told him no Bruce was afraid!"

"That's right," said Betty eagerly. "That's right Cywil. No Bruce is
afraid. But you did knock him down, didn't you."

Cyril hesitated--then his trouble broke from him in a burst. "We fight
to-night down at our coral islands at seven," he said.

"Oh my bwave Cywil!" exclaimed Betty admiringly. "Oh, I am so glad--oh,
I am so very glad!"

But Cyril looked doleful, and was lagging behind his small eager
sister.

"I'm not so sure that he meant us to fight," he said. "He--he never
asked me to."

"What did he say?"

"He only said something about a challenge and things."

"Oh," said Betty, eager again in a minute; "_if_ he said 'challenge' you
_must_ fight. There's no get out."

"But I've hurt my leg."

"Oh never mind your leg--think of the honour of the Bruces!" said the
fervent Betty, who regarded the family cognomen as something sacred and
against which no breath of evil must be allowed to come.

"Honour of the Bruces be hanged, if I'm lame," said Cyril savagely.

A sense of foreboding swept over Betty as she followed Cyril into the
house. Her imagination showed her willows and the "coral islands," and
only John Brown--big square John Brown--there. She knew the story that
would soon be all over the school--all over the neighbourhood--that
Cyril had been _afraid_ to fight. Of course she, Betty, his own twin
sister, knew there would not be a grain of truth in it. She knew he was
shy and delicate, and had hurt his leg. But for all that, she wished
eagerly that he were not shy and delicate, and did not always have some
bodily ill when fighting time came. And more than one sob shook her, for
she beheld the honour of the Bruces being trampled under John Brown's
big boots.

She set the table and went about her usual household tasks in a very
half-hearted way. Cyril would not look at her, and crept off to bed at
six o'clock, complaining of the pain in his leg. Tea was over by then,
and Betty, with her woeful look still on her face was helping "wash up"
in the kitchen.

Cyril in his bedroom turned down his stocking and examined the little
blue bruise near his knee. That there was some outward and visi