Ellen looked very sympathizing when she came in with his tea, and found his dinner untouched.

“Eat your tea, Master Fred,” she said, gently.  “The like of ye can’t go without your victuals, no way.  I don’t know what you’ve done, but I ain’t afeared there is any great harm in it, though your collar is on crooked and there’s a tear in your jacket, to say nothing of a black and blue place under your left eye.  But eat your tea.  Here’s some fruit cake Biddy sent o’ purpose.”

Somebody did think of and feel sorry for him!  Fred felt comforted on the instant by Ellen’s kind words and Biddy’s plum cake; and I must say, ate a hearty, hungry boy’s supper; then went to bed and slept soundly until late the next morning.

We have not space to follow Fred through the tediousness of the following week.  His father strictly carried out the punishment to the letter No one came near him but Ellen, though he heard the voices of his sisters and the usual happy home sounds constantly about him.

Had Fred really been guilty, even in the matter of a street fight, he would have been the unhappiest boy living during this time; but we know he was not, so we shall be glad to hear that with his books and the usual medley of playthings with which a boy’s room is piled, he contrived to make the time pass without being very wretched.  It was the disgrace of being punished, the lost position in school, and above all, the triumph which it would be to Sam, which made him the most miserable.  The very injustice of the thing was its balm in this case.  May it be so, my young readers, with any punishment which may ever happen to you!

All these things, however, were opening the way to make Fred’s revenge, when it came, the more complete.

*****

Fred Sargent, of course, had lost his place, and was subjected to a great many curious inquiries when he returned to school.

He had done his best, in his room, to keep up with his class, but his books, studied “in prison,” as he had learned to call it, and in the sitting-room, with his sister Nellie and his mother to help him, were very different things.  Still, “doing your best” always brings its reward; and let me say in passing, before the close of the month Fred had won his place again.

This was more easily done than satisfying the kind inquiries of the boys.  So after trying the first day to evade them, Fred made a clean breast of it and told the whole story.

I think, perhaps, Mr. Sargent’s severe and unjust discipline had a far better effect upon the boys generally than upon Fred particularly.  They did not know how entirely Fred had acted on the defensive, and so they received a lesson which most of them never forgot on the importance which a kind, genial man, with a smile and a cheery word for every child in town, attached to brawling.

After all, the worst effect of this punishment came upon Sam Crandon himself.  Very much disliked as his wicked ways had made him before, he was now considered as a town nuisance.  Everybody avoided him, and when forced to speak to him did so in the coldest, and often in the most unkind manner.