t him. He had not fainted, but he felt very
sick and dizzy, and nobody sympathised with him. A small freckle-faced
boy was standing over him.

"The ground _is_ slippery to-day," he grinned, extending a hand to the
unfortunate Tim, who lay on the sludgy, squdgy mud gasping like a
recently-landed trout.

Tim accepted, and scrambled painfully to his feet. The pomp of battle
had departed from him.

A few weeks afterwards, as Tim was walking across the water meadows, he
saw a youth of serious and agricultural appearance throwing a poor,
defenceless little terrier into the mill stream. Every time the
miserable little animal crawled up on to the river bank the youth
hurled it into the deep water again. Now, that was the kind of thing
that Victor was very down on. In every chapter Victor punished people
for cruelty to animals. Victor's blood always boiled at such a
sight--moreover, his strong arm always shot out, his eyes always
flashed, and the great hulking coward _always_ lay prone at his feet
begging for mercy with clasped hands. So Tim gathered together his
recollections of Victor's stock phrases, and advanced on the stolid
youth:

"You cowardly ruffian! Have you no feelings that you ill-treat a man's
best friend in that way?"

The stolid-looking youth seemed slightly astonished. He thrust his face
forward and shook his fist under Tim's nose. "Not your blooming
business," he said. "You shift."

"You've got no right," began Tim.

"Right!" The youth's note was fierce. Then he took poor Tim by the
scruff of his neck, and observed that he had been teaching the pup to
swim because he was water-shy, and that it was good for all kinds of
pups to know how to swim. Then he pushed Tim into the water after the
pup in order to teach him to keep his mouth shut and mind his own
business.

Tim went away with the idea (perfectly correct) that the stolid-looking
youth's hands that had gripped his neck and the seat of his knickers
were very strong, and another impression that even Victor would not have
stood an earthly chance against such a fellow. And it was just then that
he was aware of a little grey idea floating in the background of his
mind that Victor was a bit of a prig--also a fraud. It annoyed him that
any such notion should occur to him that the glory of his hero was an
illusion, and he shook his head to get rid of it. Then his brain sent a
"wireless" that Victor might be all right in a little toy world of his
own, pe