ve got brooches of
my own, thank you, and I'll trouble you to go."

"'Tarn't good enough for you, I suppose. Well, I'll bring you something
better."

_Bang_.

The cottage door was closed violently. Then we heard footsteps, which
ceased after a minute, and we went on out toward the lane.

"Make haste!" I said; "it must be getting late."

"Ah," said Mercer, "if I'd got a watch like old Eely's, we could tell
the time."

"And as you haven't, we must guess it," I said. "Look!"

Mercer turned at my words, for he was looking back to see if Polly
Hopley was visible at the cottage door, the news we had heard of her
father being away robbing us of any desire to call.

There, about fifty yards away, with his back to us, was Magglin, rubbing
something on his sleeve. Then he breathed upon it, and gave it another
rub, before holding it up in the sunshine, and we could see that it was
bright and yellow, possibly a brooch.

The next minute the poacher had leaped into the wood and passed among
the trees.

"Oh, what a game!" said Mercer, as we walked away. "If Bob Hopley
knows, he'll lick old Magglin with a ramrod. There, come on."

We reached the school in good time, only two or three of the boys being
about, and spent the next half-hour turning over Mercer's
melancholy-looking specimens of the taxidermist's art, one of the most
wretched being a half finished rabbit, all skin and tow.

"Well, I would burn that," I said. "It does look a brute."

"Burn it? I should think not," he cried indignantly. "It looks queer,
because it isn't finished. I'm going to make a natural history scene of
that in a glass case. That's to be a rabbit just caught by a weasel,
and I shall have the weasel holding on by the back of its neck, and the
rabbit squealing."

"Where's your weasel?"

"Oh, I shall get Magglin or Bob Hopley to shoot me one some day. Wish
I'd got a gun of my own!"

"You're always wishing for guns and watches, or something else you
haven't got," I said, laughing.

"Well, that's quite natural, isn't it?" cried Mercer good-humouredly.
"I always feel like that, and it does seem a shame that old Eely should
have tail coats and white waistcoats and watches, and I shouldn't. But,
I say, Frank, he can't fight, can he?"

"No," I said, "but don't talk about it. I hate thinking of it now."

"I don't," said Mercer. "I shall always think about it when I come up
here, and feel as I did then, punching poor old Dicks