ing always a little lady,
and I felt crushed at the thought that I was about to be whipped before
all the village children.

At home I had been protected if only by my mother's tears, but here I
was alone, and felt myself to be so little and helpless. But just as my
lip was beginning to drop, at the thought of what my mother would suffer
if she saw me in this position of infamy, and I was about to cry out to
the schoolmistress: "Don't beat me! Oh! please don't beat me!" a strange
thing happened, which turned my shame into surprise and triumph.

Through the mist which had gathered before my eyes I saw a boy coming
out of the boys' class at the end of the long room. It was Martin
Conrad, and I remember that he rolled as he walked like old Tommy the
gardener. Everybody saw him, and the schoolmistress said in her sharp
voice:

"Martin Conrad, what right have you to leave your place without
permission? Go back, sir, this very moment."

Instead of going back Martin came on, and as he did so he dragged his
big soft hat out of the belt of his Norfolk jacket and with both hands
pulled it down hard on his head.

"Go back, sir!" cried the schoolmistress, and I saw her step towards him
with the cane poised and switching in the air, as if about to strike.

The boy said nothing, but just shaking himself like a big dog he dropped
his head and butted at the schoolmistress as she approached him, struck
her somewhere in the waist and sent her staggering and gasping against
the wall.

Then, without a word, he took my hand, as something that belonged to
him, and before the schoolmistress could recover her breath, or the
scholars awake from their astonishment, he marched me, as if his little
stocky figure had been sixteen feet tall, in stately silence out of the
school.

NINTH CHAPTER

I was never sent back to school, and I heard that Martin, by order of
the butcher, was publicly expelled. This was a cause of distress to our
mothers, who thought the future of our lives had been permanently
darkened, but I cannot say that it ever stood between us and our
sunshine. On the contrary it occurred that--Aunt Bridget having washed
her hands of me, and Martin's father being unable to make up his mind
what to do with him--we found ourselves for some time at large and were
nothing loth to take advantage of our liberty, until a day came which
brought a great disaster.

One morning I found Martin with old Tommy the Mate in his potti