What Mr. Dulany had said was true.  The lads of Mr. Fairbrother’s school being mostly of the unpopular party, we of King William’s had organized our cohorts and led them on to a signal victory.  We fell upon the enemy even as they were emerging from their stronghold, the schoolhouse, and smote them hip and thigh, with the sheriff of Anne Arundel County a laughing spectator.  Some of the Tories (for such we were pleased to call them) took refuge behind Mr. Fairbrother’s skirts, who shook his cane angrily enough, but without avail.  Others of the Tory brood fought stoutly, calling out:  “God save the King!” and “Down with the traitors!” On our side Francie Willard fell, and Archie Dennison raised a lump on my head the size of a goose egg.  But we fairly beat them, and afterwards must needs attack the Tory dominie himself.  He cried out lustily to the sheriff and spectators, of whom there were many by this time, for help, but got little but laughter for his effort.  Young Lloyd and I, being large lads for our age, fairly pinioned the screeching master, who cried out that he was being murdered, and keeping his cane for a trophy, thrust him bodily into his house of learning, turned the great key upon him, and so left him.  He made his escape by a window and sought my grandfather in the Duke of Marlboro’ Street as fast as ever his indignant legs would carry him.

Of his interview with Mr. Carvel I know nothing save that Scipio was requested presently to show him the door, and conclude therefrom that his language was but ill-chosen.  Scipio’s patrician blood was wont to rise in the presence of those whom he deemed outside the pale of good society, and I fear he ushered Mr. Fairbrother to the street with little of that superior manner he used to the first families.  As for Mr. Daaken, I feel sure he was not ill-pleased at the discomfiture of his rival, though it cost him five of his scholars.

Our schoolboy battle, though lightly undertaken, was fraught with no inconsiderable consequences for me.  I was duly chided and soundly whipped by my grandfather for the part I had played; but he was inclined to pass the matter after that, and set it down to the desire for fighting common to most boyish natures.  And he would have gone no farther than this had it not been that Mr. Green, of the Maryland Gazette, could not refrain from printing the story in his paper.  That gentleman, being a stout Whig, took great delight in pointing out that a grandson of Mr. Carvel was a ringleader in the affair.  The story was indeed laughable enough, and many a barrister’s wig nodded over it at the Coffee House that day.  When I came home from school I found Scipio beside my grandfather’s empty seat in the dining-room, and I learned that Mr. Carvel was in the garden with my Uncle Grafton and the Reverend Bennett Allen, rector of St. Anne’s.  I well knew that something out of the common was in the wind to disturb my grandfather’s dinner.  Into the garden I went, and under the