ve turned me out
of doors," whined George.

"Oh! curse your fine words; it's you who forget, you swab. Ay, it's
you who forget that you asked me to take the money to the gambling-
tent, and made me promise that you should have half of what we won,
but that I should play for both. What, are you beginning to remember
now--is it coming back to you after a whole month? I am going to
quicken your memory up presently, I can tell you; I have got a good
deal to pay off, I'm thinking. I know what you are at; you want to
play cuckoo, to turn 'Cousin Philip' out that 'Cousin George' may fill
the nest. You know the old man's soft points, and you keep working him
up against me. You think that you would like the old place when he's
gone--ay, and I daresay that you will get it before you have done, but
I mean to have my penn'orth out of you now, at any rate," and,
brushing the tears of anger that stood in his brown eyes away with the
back of his hand, the speaker proceeded to square up to George in a
most determined way.

Now Philip, with his broad shoulders and his firm-knit frame, would,
even at eighteen, have been no mean antagonist for a full-grown man;
much more then did he look formidable to the lankly, overgrown
stripling crouching against the corner of the wall that prevented his
further retreat.

"Philip, you're not going to strike me, are you, when you know you are
so much stronger?"

"Yes, I am, though; if I can't match you with my tongue, at any rate I
will use my fists. Look out."

"Oh, Philip, don't! I'll tell your father."

"Tell him! why, of course you will, I know that; but you shall have
something to lie about this time," and he advanced to the attack with
a grim determination not pleasant for his cousin to behold.

Finding that there was no escape, George turned upon him with so
shrill a curse that it even frightened from his leafy perch in the oak
above the tame turtle-dove, intensely preoccupied as he was in cooing
to a new-found mate. He did more than curse; he fought like a cornered
rat, and with as much chance as the rat with a trained fox-terrier. In
a few seconds his head was as snugly tucked away in the chancery of
his cousin's arm as ever any property was in the court of that name,
and, to speak truth, it seemed quite possible that, when it emerged
from its retreat, it would, like the property, be much dilapidated and
extensively bled.

Let us not dwell upon the scene; for George it was a very pa