"Well, I know," said Clint, slowly, "that I caught this fish in the deep hole under the big willow, and I thought then 'twas a mate for Mel's."
"Pretty close mate," said Mel, with a little sneer.
"It's well played, Clint," laughed Wat, "but you see you can't fool me. You'd better own up, now, like a good boy."
Clint's face glowed with sudden fire. "I've told you the truth, whether you believe it or not," said he. "But Mel can have my fish if he wants it."
"No," said Mel, briefly; "if it's worth taking, it's worth keeping. Come, boys, let's go." And then the three walked away up the path which led through the woods to the highway, leaving Clint standing alone there with clinched hands and a swelling heart, and tears of angry mortification burning in his eyes.
And that was how the boys of Barham came to send Clint Parsons to Coventry.
"When he's a-mind to own up, and say he's sorry and won't do such a thing again," said they, "we'll take him back."
But there wasn't the least danger of Clint's confessing, if indeed he had anything to confess. He went about his daily duties as usual, and if his merry whistle was a whit less merry because of the changed atmosphere, made manifest by averted eyes and cold side-glances and covert allusions to "that scaley trick," not one of the forty boys in Barham knew it.