gether the next morning, and when Taylor appeared
round a bend in the road Warren walked up and joined him.

'Look here, Taylor, I had no business to say what I did the other day,
for I can't fight you, it seems. My father has forbidden it,
because----'

'Then you won't repeat what you said the other day?' interrupted
Taylor eagerly.

'What do you take me for? I should be a cad if I did. Besides, I can
see now that I have no business to blame you for what----No, I'm not
going to say anything,' he whispered, in answer to Taylor's frown.
'Let every tub stand on its own bottom, I say.'

'All right, old fellow, we'll let the matter drop, then, and, mind,
mum is the word between us.'

'Right you are,' said Warren, and then he ran off to join Horace, for
he had drawn Taylor aside to say this, as neither of them wished
their talk to be overheard.

Whatever it might be that Warren had heard concerning the antecedents
of Taylor's family, he could not be more sensitive upon the point than
Warren was over his inability to fight without danger to his life. For
a schoolboy to be told that he cannot stand up in a fair, square fight
without bringing the danger to his antagonist of being charged with
manslaughter, had brought such a shock to the boy that it was this,
rather than the effects of the fall, that made his father forbid him
going to school the previous day. The lad had wondered how he was to
get out of finishing the fight already begun; and it demanded a
greater amount of courage on his part to walk up to Taylor and ask him
to let the matter end where it was, than to stand up before him for a
turn at fisticuffs, even with the almost dead certainty of getting the
worst of it.

He had told his secret to Horace as he came along, glad of a confidant
who would understand his difficulty; and Horace had counselled that he
should make up his quarrel with Taylor, even though it involved
throwing him over, if Taylor should make the demand.

Warren shook his head. 'I shan't do that,' he said. 'I think we shall
find another way, and you can tell the fellows we have agreed to cry
quits. But don't tell them I can't stand up and fight, for fear the
other fellow should get sent to prison afterwards. That's the dreadful
part about it, and that's what my father says would be pretty sure to
follow. What an awful muff I must be!' sighed the boy, 'worse than any
girl!'

'But look here, you've just done something that took a lot more