ly, for he was
passing on, when my despondent answer to the everlasting question caught
his ear. He turned round then--

"Any relation to Hammond of Holt?"

I replied, meekly but rather more cheerfully, that he was my uncle.

"I know him very well," the new-comer said. "Don't bully him more than
you can help, you fellows; I'll wait for you after calling over,
Hammond. I should like to ask you about the squire."

He had no time to say more, for just then the ball was kicked off, and
the battle began. I saw him afterward often during that afternoon,
always in the front of the rush or the thick of the scrimmage, and I
saw, too, more than one player limp out of his path disconsolately,
trying vainly to dissemble the pain of a vicious "hack."

I'll try to sketch Guy Livingstone as he appeared to me then, at our
first meeting.

He was about fifteen, but looked fully a year older, not only from his
height, but from a disproportionate length of limb and development of
muscle, which ripened later into the rarest union of activity and
strength that I have ever known. His features were very dark and pale,
too strongly marked to be called handsome; about the lips and lower jaw
especially there was a set sternness that one seldom sees before the
beard is grown. The eyes were very dark gray, nearly black, and so
deeply set under the thick eyebrows that they looked smaller than they
really were; and I remember, even at that early age, their expression,
when angered, was any thing but pleasant to meet. His dress was well
adapted for displaying his deep square chest and sinewy arms--a
close-fitting jersey, and white trowsers girt by a broad black belt; the
cap, orange velvet, fronted with a silver Maltese cross.

The few words he had spoken worked an immediate change in my favor. I
heard one of my tormentors say, not without awe, "The Count knows his
people at home;" and they not only left me in peace, but, a little
later, some of them began to tell me of a recent exploit of Guy's, which
had raised him high in their simple hero-worship, and which, I dare say,
is still enumerated among the feats of the brave days of old by the fags
over their evening small-beer.

To appreciate it, you must understand that the highest form in the
school--the sixth--were regarded by the fags and other subordinate
classes with an inexpressible reverence and terror. They were considered
as exempt from the common frailties of schoolboy nature: no one