me to have had him manifest interest enough in my welfare to refuse my
request.

I was naturally enterprising and fearless, and was therefore foremost
in all feats of daring, in all trials of skill in athletic games.
Indeed, to sum up the estimate which was made of me by my associates
in school and the people of Parkville, I was "a smart boy." Perhaps
my vanity was tickled once or twice by hearing this appellation
applied to me; but I am sure I was not spoiled by the favor with which
I was regarded.

Though I was not an unhappy boy, there was an aching void in my heart
which I could not fill, a longing for such a home as hundreds of my
young friends enjoyed; and I would gladly have exchanged the freedom
from restraint for which others envied me for the poorest home in the
town, where I could have been welcomed by a fond mother, where I could
have had a kind father to feel an interest in me.

During the spring, summer, and autumn months, when the wind and
weather would permit, I went to school in my sail-boat. My course lay
along the shore, and if I was becalmed and likely to be tardy, I had
only to moor my craft, and take to the road. At the noon intermission,
therefore, my boat was available for use, and I always had a party.

On the day that I was called up charged with fighting, the Splash--for
that was the suggestive name I had chosen for my trim little
craft--was lying at the boat pier on the lake in front of the
Institute building. The forenoon session of the school had just
closed, and I had gone to the boat to eat my dinner, which I always
carried in the stern locker.

Before I had finished, Bill Poodles came down with an Arithmetic in
his hand. It was the dinner hour of the boarding students, and I
wondered that Bill was not in the refectory. Our class had a difficult
lesson in arithmetic that day, which I had worked out in the solitude
of my chamber at the cottage the preceding evening. The students had
been prohibited, under the most severe penalty, from assisting each
other; and it appeared that Bill had vainly applied to half a dozen of
his classmates for help: none of them dared to afford it.

Bill Poodles was a disagreeable fellow, arrogant and "airy" as he was
lazy and stupid. I doubt whether he ever learned a difficult task
alone. The arithmetic lesson was a review of the principles which the
class had gone over, and consisted of a dozen examples, printed on a
slip of paper, to test the knowledg