with his fists, but to-night Tommy was master.

"You jest stick to me, Shovel," he said airily. "Keep a grip on my hand,
same as if yer was Elspeth."

"But what was we copped for, Tommy?" entreated humble Shovel.

Tommy asked him if he knew what a butler was, and Shovel remembered,
confusedly, that there had been a portrait of a butler in his father's
news-sheet.

"Well, then," said Tommy, inspired by this same source, "there's a room
a butler has, and it is a pantry, so you and me we crawled through the
winder and we opened the door to the gang. You and me was copped. They
catched you below the table and me stabbing the butler."

"It was me what stabbed the butler," Shovel interposed, jealously.

"How could you do it, Shovel?"

"With a knife, I tell yer!"

"Why, you didn't have no knife," said Tommy, impatiently.

This crushed Shovel, but he growled sulkily:

"Well, I bit him in the leg."

"Not you," said selfish Tommy. "You forgets about repenting, and if I
let yer bite him, you would brag about it. It's safer without, Shovel."