“Pooh!  Abel, how would you like to have Gyles Blanding shy his boots at your head?”

Abel looked at him a moment, sarcastically.  Then he replied: 

“My young friend, I should like to see him try it.  But fagging concerns small boys, not large ones.”

“Yes!” retorted Gabriel, his eyes flashing, as he kept tossing the ball nervously, and catching it; “yes, that’s the meanness of it:  the little boy can’t help himself.”

“By golly, I’d kick!” put in Little Malacca.

“Then you’d be licked till you dropped, my small Sir,” said Abel, sneeringly.

“Yes, Abel,” replied Gabriel, “but it’s a mean thing for an American boy to want fagging.”

“Not at all,” he answered; “there are some young American gentlemen I know who would be greatly benefited by being well fagged; yes, made to lie down in the dirt and lick a little of it, and fetch and carry.  And to be kicked out of bed every morning and into bed every night would be the very best thing that could happen to ’em.  By George, I should like to have the kicking and licking begin now!”

Gabriel had the same dislike of Abel which the latter felt for him, but they had never had any open quarrel.  Even thus far in the present conversation there had been nothing personal said.  It was only a warm general discussion.  Gabriel merely asked, when the other stopped,

“What good does the fagging do the fellow that flings the boots and bullies the little one?”

“Good?” answered Abel—­“what good does it do?  Why, he has been through it all himself, and he’s just paying it off.”

Abel smiled grimly as he looked round upon the boys, who did not seem at all enthusiastic for his suggestion.

“Well,” said he, “I’m afraid I shall have to postpone my millennium of fagging.  But I don’t know what else will make men of you.  And mark you, my merry men, there’s more than one kind of fagging;” and he looked in a droll way—­a droll way that was not in the least funny, but made the boys all wonder what Abel Newt was up to now.

CHAPTER IV.

Night.

It was already dusk, but the summer evening is the best time for play.  The sport in the play-ground at Mr. Gray’s was at its height, and the hot, eager, panting boys were shouting and scampering in every direction, when a man ran in from the road and cried out, breathless,

“Where’s Mr. Gray?”

“In his study,” answered twenty voices at once.  The man darted toward the house and went in; the next moment he reappeared with Mr. Gray, both of them running.

“Get out the boat!” cried Mr. Gray, “and call the big boys.  There’s a man drowning in the pond!”

The game was over at once, and each young heart thrilled with vague horror.  Abel Newt, Muddock, Blanding, Tom Gait, Jim Greenidge, and the rest of the older boys, came rushing out of the school-room, and ran toward the barn, in which the boat was kept upon a truck.  In a moment the door was open, the truck run out, and all the boys took hold of the rope.  Mr. Gray and the stranger led the way.  The throng swept out of the gate, and as they hastened silently along, the axles of the truck kindled with the friction and began to smoke.