as he fought
hard to control himself, but in vain, for he rose to his knees at last
with the tears coming fast, and then limped slowly along, sobbing
bitterly.

"Serve you right," cried Green. "Teach you not to be so jolly saucy.
Now then, none of your sham. I didn't hurt you much. Go on."

"I--I can't yet," sobbed the boy.

"Oh yes, you can. None of that. Here, carry these."

He thrust the nest of young thrushes into the boy's hand, and forced him
to proceed, limping heavily.

"Look at the little humbug," cried Green, as they all went on, with
Dominic Braydon hanging down his head and gazing hard at the ground to
keep from darting indignant glances at the tyrant who had bullied and
insulted him till it had been almost beyond bearing. He felt a choking
sensation in the throat, and an intense longing to do something; but his
ways were peaceful, and Green, was heavy, big, and strong. In addition,
he was cock of the school, to whom every one had yielded for a long time
past; and Dominic Braydon had still fresh in his memory that day when he
had resisted a piece of tyranny and fought at the far end of the school
garden, where an unlucky blow on the bridge of the nose had half blinded
him and made him an easy victim to the enemy, who administered a severe
drubbing and procured for his adversary a birching for fighting--it was
before caning days--and a long series of impositions for obstinacy, a
trait the doctor said that he absolutely abhorred--Dominic's obstinacy
consisting in a stubborn refusal to confess who had beaten him. This
his schoolfellows called honourable; but Green had other opinions, and
set it down to the fear of getting another thrashing for telling tales.

But Green was not quite correct.

And so on this bright spring half-holiday the boys went on along the
side of the common toward the dense furze clump, Green hectoring,
throwing stones at everything he saw, from the donkeys and geese to the
yellow-hammers which flitted along the hedge, stopping now and then to
twitter out their quaint little song about "a little bit o' bread and no
cheese," and looking as much like canaries as they could as they perched
upon some twig.

"I'll give you a bit o' cheese and no bread," cried Green, as he hurled
stone after stone, but fortunately with the worst of aim. "Now then,
you Tomlins, stop that miserable snivelling, and walk upright; you're
not hurt."

The boy hastily wiped his eyes, as he mentally w