"Oh! he was staunch," the boy grumbled.

"And a staunch friend is not always to be found. Now, have you tried
your own way of rectifying this business, Ricky?"

"I have done everything."

"And failed!"

There was a pause, and then the deep-toned evasion--

"Tom Bakewell's a coward!"

"I suppose, poor fellow," said Austin, in his kind way, "he doesn't want
to get into a deeper mess. I don't think he's a coward."

"He is a coward," cried Richard. "Do you think if I had a file I would
stay in prison? I'd be out the first night! And he might have had the
rope, too--a rope thick enough for a couple of men his size and weight.
Ripton and I and Ned Markham swung on it for an hour, and it didn't give
way. He's a coward, and deserves his fate. I've no compassion for a
coward."

"Nor I much," said Austin.

Richard had raised his head in the heat of his denunciation of poor Tom.
He would have hidden it had he known the thought in Austin's clear eyes
while he faced them.