There was no fear of that after the first few minutes, for further examination showed that they were numbered, and those numbers were burned into our memories at once.

"Oh, I say," cried Mercer at last, "talk about watches! these are something like. Why, one of 'em's worth a dozen of old Eely's."

"Don't talk about it!" I said, with a shiver; and after carefully opening mine so as to gaze at the works, Mercer of course following suit, the watches were carefully returned to their cases and placed in our pockets.

"What shall we do now?" asked Mercer; "go and show them to the boys?"

"No; it will only make them disappointed. Let's go down at once to Bob Hopley's."

"What for?"

"To take this."

Mercer looked at the smaller packet I had for a few moments.

"What is it?" he said.

"A present from my mother for Polly."

"Oh! Why, it must be a watch."

"No," I said; "I think it's a brooch or a pair of earrings."

"Oh, won't she be pleased!"

We walked down to the lodge, where Polly met us at the door, eager to point to a tin of jam pigs which she had just drawn from the oven.

"I was wishing some of you young gentlemen would come," she said.

"They're red currant and raspberry. You're just in time."

Polly's ideas of our visits to the cottage were always connected with tuck, and she looked at me wonderingly when I said we had not come for that.

"There aren't nothing more the matter, is there?" she cried, as she set down her tin.

I set her mind at rest by taking the packet from my breast.

"Is--is that for me?" she said, with her face flushing with excitement.

"Yes; open it."

I saw her little red, rough hands tremble as she untied the string, and after removing one or two papers, all of which she carefully smoothed out flat, she came upon a thin morocco case.

"Oh, it's earrings!" she cried; "and you two have bought 'em for me, because I--because I--because I--How do you open it? Oh my! It's a little watch."

"Yes," I said, "a watch."

"Yours, Master Burr junior?" she cried. "Oh, it was good of you to come and show it to me!"

"No, Polly," I cried, looking at it eagerly. "I told you. It's for you."

"But--but--it can't be."

"Yes," I said, pointing to a little three-cornered note. "Open that and see what it says."

Polly's trembling fingers hurriedly opened the paper, which she read, and then handed to me, Mercer looking over me as I held it out and read these simple words:--

"For Mary Hopley, with a mother's thanks."

I saw the tears start to the girl's eyes, and there was something very charming in her next act, which was to carefully fold the note and kiss it before placing it in her bosom.

"I shan't never part with that," she said softly; and then she stood gazing down at the watch, till a shadow darkened the door, and big Bob Hopley came striding in.

"Hullo, young gents!" he said; "how are you? Why Polly! What's--"

"A present, father, from Mr Burr junior's mar. Ought I to take it?"

"Yes," I cried eagerly, "of course. You don't know how happy you made me by what you said. She is to keep it, isn't she, Bob Hopley?"

"Well," said the big fellow, holding the little watch carefully and admiringly in his great brown hand,--"well, seeing, my la.s.s, how it's give, and why it's give, and who give it, and so on, I almost think you might."

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

A man once said to me that our brains are very much like a bee's honeycomb, all neat little cells, in which all our old recollections are stored up ready for use when we want them. There lie all our adventures and the results of all our studies, everything we have acquired in our lives.

Perhaps he was right--I don't know--I never saw my brains; but, if he is, some of us have got the cells so tightly packed together, and in so disorderly a way, that when we want some special thing which we learned, we cannot find it; it is so covered up, so buried, that it is quite hopeless to try and get at it. This is generally the case with me, and, consequently, there are no end of school adventures during my long stay at "Old Browne's" that I cannot set down here, for the simple reason that I cannot get at them, or, if I do, I find that the cell is crushed and the memory mixed up all in a muddle with wax.

I suppose I did not pack them into the comb properly. Oddly enough, my recollections are clearest about the part of my days which preceded the trouble over the watch.

After that, life seemed to go on at such a rapid rate that there was not time to put all the events away so that they could be found when wanted for further use.

Still, I recall a few things which preceded my leaving the school for Woolwich.

There was that hot June day down by the river--little stream it really was--that ran through a copse about half a mile from the school. It was on Farmer Dawson's land, down in the hollow of the valley, up one side of which lay his big range of hop-gardens.

The Doctor paid him a certain rent for the right of the boys going down to this place, where a great dam had been built up of clay and clinkers.

It was not all new, but done up afresh after lying a couple of hundred years or so untouched. All round it, Farmer Dawson used to send his men in the winter to cut down the coppice, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the ash and eating chestnut trees down to the stumps to make the young growth into hop-poles; but when the Doctor offered to take it and repair the dam, the hop-poles were left to grow and form a beautiful screen round this dell.

I remember what interest we boys took in it during one winter, when the Doctor had set a lot of men who were out of work to dig and wheel the clinkers and clay, a barrowful of one, and then a barrowful of the other, along the dam; and with old Lomax to give orders, we all marched and counter-marched in our thickest boots over the top of the dam, to trample it all down strong and firm.

You will think, perhaps, that it was easy enough to get clay, and so it was, for a thick bed lay only a few yards from the stream; but what about the clinkers?

I'll tell you. There was quite a mine of them, hard, shiny fragments, some of which had run just like so much black or brown gla.s.s.

How did they get there, looking like so much volcanic slag? Why, they were the refuse from a huge iron furnace that used to be in full blast in the days of Queen Elizabeth or King James, and the dam we were repairing, after it had been grown over with trees, and the water reduced to a little stream, belonged to one of the old hammer ponds whose waters were banked up to keep a sufficiency to turn the big wheel that worked the tilt-hammers and perhaps blew the iron furnace till it roared.

For that peaceful rural part of Suss.e.x was in those days a big forest, whose wood was cut down and made into charcoal. The forest is gone, and only represented now by patches of copsewood saved for cutting down every ten years or so for poles; but the iron lies there still in great veins or beds, though it is no longer dug out, the iron of to-day being found and smelted north and west, where coal-pits are handy; and the ironmasters of Suss.e.x, whose culverins and big guns were famous all the world round, have given place to farmers and hop-growers, where grimy men used to tend the glowing metal and send it running into form and mould.