ne,
as fresh as paint from his success, following up the other blubbing with
rage, pain, and sickness. Before Acton called, the fellow dropped to the
ground and howled dismally.

"Get your coat, Jack, and then come here. He's done. Stand back, you
others."

Jack came back.

"Now, you pig, get up and apologize to this gentleman for having knocked
him into the snow-heap. I suppose your pig's eyes couldn't see he was
only half your size." Acton got hold of the fellow by the collar and
jerked him to his feet. "Apologize."

The fellow would not understand; he snivelled obstinately, and struggled
aimlessly in Acton's grasp.

"Apologize."

"I wown't."

"Good," said Acton, grimly. With his flat hand he gave the fellow a
thundering cuff which sent him sprawling. Acton then caught him by the
scruff of his neck and threw him headlong into the snow-heap.

"Come along, Bourne," he said, with a smile. "You have fought a good
fight this day, and no mistake. That fellow will have a fit the next and
every time he sees the smallest St. Amory's fag's cap."

"I say, Acton, you're an awful brick to back me up like that."

"Don't mention it, Bourne. Come and have some tea with me, and I'll pour
oil into your wounds, or at any rate, I'll paint 'em."

So young Bourne had tea with Acton, and his host went out afterwards to
Dann's the chemist's and brought back a camel's-hair brush and some
lotion. Thanks to this, Jack's scars appeared as very honourable wounds
indeed.

From that day Jack thought Acton the finest fellow in St. Amory's.

"He did not spread-eagle that fool," he said to himself, "but let me have
the glory of pounding the ugly brute into jelly, and made me go in and
win when I was ready to give in to the cad. Why did not Phil give him his
cap? There's something rotten somewhere."

As for Acton, as I said before, he regarded this little incident as a
treasure trove upon which he could draw almost unlimitedly in his
campaign against Bourne. "I'll strike at Bourne, senr., through his young
brother. I'll train him up in the way he should go, and when our
unspeakable prig of a Philip sees what a beautiful article young Jack
finally emerges, he'll wish he'd left me alone. Jack, my boy, I'm sorry,
but I'm going to make you a bad boy, just to give your elder brother
something to think about. You're going to become a terrible monster of
iniquity, just to shock your reverend brother."

Acton took not the smallest interest