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.
"I never met a coward myself," Austin continued.