"Serve you right. Come away."

"Here, boys, help!" cried Tomlins, making a grimace. "Convict's setting
up for--Ah!"

He did not have time to finish his sentence, for Nic caught him sharply
by the shoulders and gave him an angry shake.

"If you say that again, I'll serve you worse than Green did. No, I
won't;" he said in repentance. "There, go on back."

The boy was silenced, and in a startled way joined his schoolfellows,
while Nic once more went close up to Green.

"Let me help you up," he said. "Here, shake hands, Green. It was only
a fight, and you might have won."

There was no answer, and Nic took his adversary by the arm, half forcing
him to rise; but Green did not turn his head, nor raise his face to gaze
in that before him, though he unresistingly allowed himself to be helped
along the side of the hedge, so as to reach the lane that led to the
high road and the village, at one end of which the park-like grounds of
the doctor's establishment stood.

"He'll come round soon," thought Nic. "He's sure to feel sore after
such a licking."

"I say, isn't old Convict a rum one," whispered one of the boys who had
been seconds.

"Well, he always was," said the other. "What do you mean?"

"Why giving Green a licking, and then going to help him like that."

The other boy looked at the battered pair, and let them pass on in
front, following afterwards with the others.

"It's the proper thing to do, isn't it?"

"Yes, with some fellows," said Tomlins, who was listening. "I should do
it to either of you chaps if I'd licked you."

The pair looked at each other and laughed.

"Hark at Mouse Tomlins," said one of them.

"Ah, you wait. I shall get bigger some day, and then I shall do just as
Convict Braydon does; but I shouldn't to old Green. You see if he don't
hit foul before long, and serve poor old Convict out."

"Don't you be so fond of calling him Convict; he doesn't like it," said
Braydon's second.

"Well, he shouldn't be a convict then," retorted the boy.

"And you shouldn't be a cocky, conceited little donkey," said the elder
boy.

"But I'm not," said the little fellow, laughing; and then wincing and
crying, "Oh, my leg!"

"And he's not a convict."

"But Gooseberry Green says his father is, and that he was sent over to
Botany Bay, and that's what makes poor old Braydon so mad."

"His father and mother are both out there somewhere, because Nic told me
so, and he says he's going out the