A hot anger burned in his heart as he recalled the cowardly attack in the dark alley. He saw that it had been deliberately planned by Dick Hunt, and that the four boys must have followed him from the corner where he saw them.
"I'll pay that Dick Hunt for this," he muttered under his breath, "an' Carrots, too. I know the chap that hit so hard was Carrots. I'll make 'em suffer for it!"
He lay there, his eyes flashing and his cheeks burning, as he thought over various schemes of vengeance. Then suddenly he thought of Mr. Scott, and that brought something else to his remembrance. He seemed to see his teacher holding out his little Bible and making him--Theodore--read aloud those two verses:
"Dearly beloved avenge not yourselves."
And "Recompense to no man evil for evil."
As he repeated these words to himself, the fire died slowly out of the boy's eyes and the angry colour faded from his cheeks. He turned restlessly in his bed and tried to banish these thoughts and bring back his schemes of vengeance, but he could not do it. He knew what was the right--what he ought to do--but he was not willing to do it. Hour after hour he argued the matter with himself, finding all sorts of reasons why, in this case, he might take vengeance into his own hands and "learn that Dick Hunt a lesson," yet feeling and knowing in the depths of his heart that whatever the old Tode Bryan might have done, Theodore Bryan, who was trying to be the bishop's shadow, certainly had no right to do evil to somebody else simply because that somebody had done evil to him.
It was nearly morning before the long battle with himself was over, but it ended at last, and it was Theodore, and not Tode who was victorious, and it was the memory of the bishop's face, and of the bishop's prayer that day in the poorhouse, that finally settled the matter.
"He'd fight for somebody else, the bishop would, but he wouldn't ever fight for himself, an' I mustn't neither," the boy murmured, softly, and then with a long breath he turned his face to the wall and fell asleep, and he had but just awakened from that sleep when Mr. Scott, with Tag under his arm, came through the long corridor to the ward where Theodore was lying in the very last cot, next the wall.
Mr. Scott had promised not to let the dog out of his arms, but if he had been better acquainted with Tag he would never have made such a rash promise. As the gentleman followed the nurse into the ward, the dog's eyes flashed a swift glance over the long line of cots, and the next instant something dark went flying down the room and up on to that last cot in the row, and there was Tag licking his master's face and hands, and wagging his tail, and barking like mad.
"Dear me!" exclaimed the nurse, running toward the corner. "This will never do. He'll drive the patients into fits! Why didn't you keep hold of him?"