I threw myself down on the bed in
a passion of rage against Mercer.

"You coward!" I cried, and as I ground my teeth I indulged in a wish
that I could have him there.

"Oh!" I cried, "only for half an hour, and then--" I did not finish my
sentence, but bounded off the bed to stand up there alone, unconsciously
enough in the position Lomax had taught me, and with my left hand raised
to strike.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

It was very different to be a prisoner now alone. I longed for Mercer's
companionship, but it was so that I might punish him for what I again
and again called his miserable cowardice, which seemed to me to make his
crime ten times worse. And so I walked up and down the little room
restlessly, thinking over the times when my school-fellow had talked
about the watch, and his intense longing to possess it, or such a one.

Nothing could be plainer. He had given way at last, and taken it on
that unlucky day when he was hanging about talking to me as I lay on the
grass with my head throbbing, and then walking away toward the tent or
to where he could get a good look at the cricketers.

"Too much for him," I said,--"too much for him, and I am to take the
credit of his theft. But I will not. If he is such a mean coward as to
let me take his stealing on my shoulders, he is not worth sparing, and
he shall take the credit for himself--upon his own shoulders and not
mine."

"Oh, what an ass I have been ever to make friends with such a fellow!"
I cried, after a pause. "I ought to have known better. Never mind, I
do know better now, and to-morrow morning I'll ask to see the Doctor,
and I'll tell him everything, and--get him expelled!"

That set me thinking once more about his people at home, and as I did, I
began to waver, and call to mind how terrible it would be, and that I
liked him too well in spite of all.

For I did like him. I had never had a brother, and he had seemed to
fill his place, so that now, for the first time, I fully understood how
we two lads had become knit together, and how terribly hard it would be
to speak out.

I sat down by the window at last, to let the cool breeze play upon my
aching temples, and as I leaned my head against the side, the cheery
voices of the boys in the field floated up to me, to make me more
wretched still.

"It's nothing to them," I said to myself. "Nobody there cares, and Eely
and Dicksee were only too glad to have their revenge upon me. I don't