to stand. Vercoe gently caught him, and
laid him quietly on his back, and sponged his face where the awful force
of Phil's blow was becoming plainer every moment.

He compressed his lips with rage and pain, and looked at Phil with such
a look of deadly hatred that Vercoe was disgusted.

"Now come, Acton. You've fought well, and, by Jove! you ought to lose
well. Bourne fought like a gentleman, and you've been beaten fairly.
What is the good of bearing any malice?"

"Look here, Acton," said Phil, "I'm jolly glad I've thrashed you, but
all is over now. Here's my hand, and we'll let bygones be bygones."

"Never!" said Acton. "I'll get even with you yet."

"So be it," said Bourne; and he turned away, and got into his coat,
leaving Vercoe and Acton on the field of battle. "Don't care to mention
it, old man," he said to me as we got to his room, "all the same, I
thought I was a gone coon just when I knocked the fellow out."

I went for my holidays that morning, and Acton, escorted by Vercoe, got
into the same train. He was white and almost scared looking at his
defeat, but there was on his face still that unfading expression of
unsatisfied hate and lust for revenge. I buried my face in my paper in
utter disgust.

So you see Acton departed from St. Amory's at the beginning of the
Easter holidays in a slightly different mood from that which he enjoyed
at Christmas, when the young Biffenites had cheered him till they were
hoarse and he was out of hearing.

Toby was almost beside himself with consternation when Bourne and Vercoe
turned up at the Courts in the afternoon.

"Your 'ands, Mr. Bourne, and your eye! What have you been a-doing of?"

"I have had the painful necessity to thrash a cad, Toby."

"But you did thrash him, sir?"

"I fancy so," said Bourne, grimly.

Jack went home in the evening a sadder and wiser boy. When he saw his
brother's closed eye and swollen lip, and the angry patches on his
cheeks, he was cut to the heart; he took his thrashing like a man, and,
when all was over, felt he loved and respected his brother more than
ever. "What a beastly little pig I've been," he said to himself.

Vercoe and Bourne were the victorious finalists at Kensington in the
rackets. It was, as the papers aptly remarked, "Quite a coincidence that
Bourne's right eye was beautifully and variously decorated in honour of
the occasion."

I don't expect many finalists, at rackets anyhow, turn up with black
eyes.