mornin' he'll be too tired to lick you much.' This, from an orphan with
practically no experience of paternal rule, argued a fine intuition.

CHAPTER V.

DICK HADDON did not enter his home immediately after parting with his
mates. Mrs. Haddon's little cottage, four roomed, with a queer skillion
front, was surrounded by a tumbled mass of tangled vegetation miscalled a
garden, and Dick loitered in the shadow of the back fence to consider
what manner of entrance would be most politic. He was shrewdly aware that
his mother might be tempted to make an attack on the impulse of the
moment, her most pathetic letter notwithstanding, and it was a point of
honour with him to offer no resistance and make no evasion when Mrs.
Haddon felt called upon to administer corporal punishment. To be sure the
maternal beatings occasioned very little physical inconvenience; but they
gave rise to much unpleasantness, and were to be avoided when possible.

As it happened, Dick was not put to the necessity of making a choice
to-night. In the midst of his cogitations he felt himself seized from
behind in a pair of long, strong arms. With the quick instinct of a
wrongdoer he suspected evil, and kicked sharply back ward at the shins of
the enemy.

'Le' go! You le' me go, see!' gasped the boy, struggling and fighting
fiercely.

Resistance was quite useless. Dick was dragged through the gate, and up
to the house. The door was opened, and he was bundled unceremoniously
into the kitchen. Then Ephraim Shine--for it was the superintendent who
had fallen upon Dick in the darkness--thrust his sparsely-whiskered,