to eat anything, but from honest liking for the boy who had been my
companion from the first.

But I was too proud to call him back, and in my anger I mentally called
him a contemptible, cowardly thief, and vowed that I would never speak
to him again.

Boys always keep those vows, of course--for an hour or two, and then
break them, and a good thing too. They would be horrible young
misanthropes if they did not.

So Tom Mercer was gone, with his bagful, string, and indiarubber ball,
and I plumped myself down on a chair by the window, rested my crossed
arms on the inner ledge, and, placing my chin upon them, sat staring out
over the beautiful Sussex landscape, thinking about what was to come.

But, mingled with those thoughts, there came plenty of memories of the
past; as my eyes lit on the woods and fields, with a glint of one of the
General's ponds where we boys had fished.

Oh, how lovely it all looked that sunny morning, with the rays flashing
from the dewy grass and leaves, and how impossible it seemed that I
could be so unhappy, shut up there like a prisoner, and looked upon by
every one as a thief!

What should I do? Wait for the truth to come out, or behave like any
high-spirited boy would,--high-spirited and gallant from my point of
view,--set them all at defiance, wait for my opportunity, and escape--go
right away and seek my fortune?

No, I did not want any fortune. My uncle wished me to be a soldier, as
my father had been, and that meant study for years, then training
perhaps at Woolwich, and at last a commission.

"I will not wait for that," I said to myself; "I'll be a soldier at
once. I'll go and enlist, and rise from the ranks, and in years to
come, when I am a captain or a major, I will go back home, and tell them
that I was perfectly innocent, and they'll be sorry they believed that I
was a thief."

These romantic thoughts put me in better spirits, and I began to plan
what I would do, and how I could get away, for I could not see in my
excitement what a young donkey I was to fill my head with such nonsense,
and what a mean, cowardly thing it would be to go off, and make my
supposed guilt a certainty with my uncle, break my mother's heart, and
generally throw all my future to the winds--always supposing it possible
that I could have found any recruiting sergeant who would have taken
such a slip of a boy, as, of course, I could not; for to a certainty I
should have been laughed at, and come