t burst into a roar of laughter, and
Henderson said, "You've caught a tartar, Jones. You can't drop salt on
this bird's tail. You had better return to Plumber, or Saint George and
the dragon. Here, my noble Viscount, what do you think of your coeval?
Is he as common as the rest of us?"

"I don't think anything about him, if you mean me by Viscount," said
Tracy peevishly, beginning at last to understand that they had been
making a fool of him.

"Quite right, Saint George; he's beneath your notice." Tracy ran his
hand through his scented hair, as if he rather Implied that he was; and
being mortified at the contrast between his own credulous vanity and
Walter's manly simplicity, and anxious if possible to regain his
position, he said angrily to Walter, "What are you looking at me for?"

Not wishing to be rude, Walter turned away, while someone observed, "A
cat may look at a king."

"Ay, a cat at a king, I grant you," answered Henderson; "but not a mere
son of Eve at any Howard Tracy."

"You are laughing at me," said Tracy to Walter again, in a still angrier
tone, seeing Walter smile at Henderson's remark.

"I've not the slightest wish to laugh at you," said Walter.

"Yes he has. Shy this at him," said Jones, putting a great bit of
orange peel into Tracy's hand.

Tracy threw it at Walter, and he without hesitation picked it up, and
flung it back in Tracy's face.

"A fight! a fight!" shouted the mischief-making group, as Tracy made a
blind blow at Walter, which his antagonist easily parried.

"Make him fight you. Challenge him," said Jones. "Invite him to the
milling-ground behind the chapel after first school to-morrow morning."

"Pistols for _two_, coffee for four, at eight to-morrow," said
Henderson. "Trample on the Dragon's tail, someone, and rouse him to the
occasion. What! he won't come to the scratch? Alack! alack!

"`What can ennoble fools or cowards
Not all the blood of all the Tracys, Dragons, and Howards!'"

He continued mischievously, as he saw that Tracy, on taking note of
Walter's compact figure, showed signs of declining the combat.

"Hush, Henderson," said Kenrick, one of the group who had taken no part
in the talk; "it's a shame to be setting two new fellows fighting their
first evening."

But Henderson's last remark had been too much for Tracy. "Will you
fight?" he said, walking up to Walter with reddening cheeks. For Tracy
had been to school before, and was no novice in th