“As for fighting, keep out of it, if you can, by all means.  When the time comes, if ever it should, that you have to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a challenge to fight, say ‘No’ if you can—­only take care you make it plain to yourself why you say ‘No.’  It’s a proof of the highest courage, if done from true Christian motives.  It’s quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger.  But don’t say ‘No’ because you fear a licking and say or think it’s because you fear God, for that’s neither Christian nor honest.  And if you do fight, fight it out; and don’t give in while you can stand and see.”

And don’t give in when you can’t! see!  For I could stand very little, and see not at all (having pommelled the school pump for the last twenty seconds), when Conway retired from the field.  As Phil Adams stepped up to shake hands with me, he received a telling blow in the stomach; for all the fight was not out of me yet, and I mistook him for a new adversary.

Convinced of my error, I accepted his congratulations, with those of the other boys, blandly and blindly.  I remember that Binny Wallace wanted to give me his silver pencil-case.  The gentle soul had stood throughout the contest with his face turned to the fence, suffering untold agony.

A good wash at the pump, and a cold key applied to my eye, refreshed me amazingly.  Escorted by two or three of the schoolfellows, I walked home through the pleasant autumn twilight, battered but triumphant.  As I went along, my cap cocked on one side to keep the chilly air from my eye, I felt that I was not only following my nose, but following it so closely, that I was in some danger of treading on it.  I seemed to have nose enough for the whole party.  My left cheek, also, was puffed out like a dumpling.  I couldn’t help saying to myself, “If this is victory, how about that other fellow?”

“Tom,” said Harry Blake, hesitating.

“Well?”

“Did you see Mr. Grimshaw looking out of the recitation-room window just as we left the yard?”

“No was he, though?”

“I am sure of it.”

“Then he must have seen all the row.”

“Shouldn’t wonder.”

“No, he didn’t,” broke in Adams, “or he would have stopped it short metre; but I guess be saw you pitching into the pump which you did uncommonly strong—­and of course be smelt mischief directly.”

“Well, it can’t be helped now,” I reflected.

“—­As the monkey said when he fell out of the cocoanut tree,” added Charley Marden, trying to make me laugh.

It was early candle-light when we reached the house.  Miss Abigail, opening the front door, started back at my hilarious appearance.  I tried to smile upon her sweetly, but the smile, rippling over my swollen cheek, and dying away like a spent wave on my nose, produced an expression of which Miss Abigail declared she had never seen the like excepting on the face of a Chinese idol.