“How–ow!”
“Don’t howl like a dog. Get up, sir, and take your beating like a man,” said Syd.
“I didn’t think it of you, Master Syd,” whimpered Pan.
“Now will you get up and walk home?”
For answer the boy got up slowly and laboriously, went on a few yards in front, and Sydney followed, feeling, as he thought, as if he was driving a donkey home.
For about a mile Pan walked steadily on, with Sydney feeling better than he had since he left home, although his knuckles were bruised, and there was a dull aching sensation in one angle of his jaw. He had gained two victories, and in spite of his weariness something very near akin to satisfaction began to warm his heart, till all at once the figure of Pan began to be visible; and as at the end of another hundred yards or so they came out upon a patch of open forest land, the figure was much plainer. So was his own, as he looked down and saw in dismay that it would soon be broad daylight, that they were some miles from the Heronry, and that Pan was covered with mud, his face smeared with ruddy stains, and that he, Sydney Belton, known as “the young gentleman up at the house,” was in very little better trim.
Chapter Seven.
The day grew brighter; tiny flecks of orange and gold began to appear high up, then there was a warm glow in the east, with the birds chirping merrily in the woodlands, and then day began.