CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
HOW OUR HEROES FALL OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN INTO THE FIRE.
Templeton opened its eyes as it saw David and Jonathan walking together across the fields that afternoon.

The Den, with native quickness of perception, instantly snuffed a battle in the air, and dogged the heels of the champions with partisan shouts and cheers.
"Dick will finish him in a round and a half," shouted Raggles.
"Don't you be too cock-sure," cried Gosse, "Georgie's got a neat 'square-fender' on him, and I rather fancy him best myself." Gosse had not the ghost of a notion what a "square-fender" was; nor had anyone else.

But the word carried weight, and there was a run on Georgie accordingly.
Raggles, however, was not to be snuffed out too easily.
"Bah!" shouted he, "what's the use of a 'square-fender,' when Dick can get down his 'postman's knock' over the top, and blink his man into fits." After that Georgie was nowhere.

A fellow who can "blink" his man with a "postman's knock," no matter what it means, is worth half-a-dozen "square-fenders." And so Dick became a favourite, and the event was considered as good as settled.
Which was just as well; for our heroes, as they walked in search of Coote, could not be so engrossed either in their newly-healed alliance, or in the affliction of their friend, as to be unaware of the commotion at their heels.

And it was not till Dick had ordered the foremost of the procession to "hook it," enforcing his precept by one or two impartially-distributed samples of his "postman's knock," that it dawned on the Den there was to be no fight after all.
Whereupon they yapped off in disgust, with their noses in the air, in search of some better sport.
Left to themselves, our heroes, with a strange mixture of joy and anxiety in their hearts, broke into a trot, and presently sighted Coote.
That unhappy youth, little dreaming of the revolution which his scrape was destined to effect in Templeton, was still sitting where Dick had left him, ruefully meditating on his near prospect of incarceration.
The vision of Dick and Heathcote advancing upon him by no means tended to allay the tumult of his feelings.
"I'm in for it now," groaned he to himself.