; but Mr Shaw did not repeat a word of
what Hugh had said. He put the boy away from his knees, because he
heard the gig coming round.

Mrs Shaw told Hugh that she hoped he would spend some of his Sundays
with his uncle and her; and his uncle added that he must come on
holidays as well as Sundays,--there was so much to see about the mill.

Phil was amused, and somewhat pleased, to find how exactly Hugh
remembered his description of the place and neighbourhood. He
recognised the duck-pond under the hedge by the road-side, with the very
finest blackberries growing above it, just out of reach. The church he
knew, of course, and the row of chestnuts, whose leaves were just
beginning to fall; and the high wall dividing the orchard from the
playground. That must have been the wall on which Mr Tooke's little
boy used to be placed to frighten him. It did not look so very high as
Hugh had fancied it. One thing which he had never seen or heard of was
the bell, under its little roof on the ridge of Mr Tooke's great house.
Was it to call in the boys to school, or for an alarm? His uncle told
him it might serve the one purpose in the day, and the other by night;
and that almost every large farm thereabouts had such a bell on the top
of the house.

The sun was near its setting when they came in sight of the Crofton
house. A long range of windows glittered in the yellow light, and Phil
said that the lower row all belonged to the school-room;--that whole
row.

In the midst of his explanations Phil stopped, and his manner grew more
rough than ever--with a sort of shyness in it too. It was because some
of the boys were within hearing, leaning over the pales which separated
the playground from the road.

"I say; hollo there!" cried one. "Is that Prater you have got with
you?"

"Prater the second," cried another. "He could not have had his name if
there had not been Prater the first."

"There! There's a scrape you have got me into already!" muttered Phil.

"Be a man, Phil, and bear your own share," said Mr Shaw; "and no spite,
because your words come back to you!"

The talk at the palings still went on, as the gig rolled quietly in the
sandy by-road.

"Prater!" poor Hugh exclaimed. "What a name!"

"Yes; that is you," said his uncle. "You know now what your nick-name
will be. Every boy has one or another: and yours might have been worse,
because you might have done many a worse thing to earn it."

"But the ushe