It would be very easy, I thought, when I got it, to make old Sam turn the grindstone at home, while I put on a tremendous edge and tried it on the thin branches of some of the trees.
"What an exciting time it would be!" I thought, and I could not help wishing that I should have to wear some kind of uniform, for a bit of gold lace would go so well with a sword.

Then I stopped short, for in all my planning there was no place for Bob Chowne, who was regularly left out of the business.
"Oh, how stupid!" I thought directly after.

"He would be the surgeon's--his father's--assistant, and bind up everybody's wounds." I'm afraid I was, like a great many more boys, ready to have my imagination take fire at the idea of a fight, and never for a moment realising what the horrors of bloodshed really were.
"Poor Bob!" I thought to myself.

"He wouldn't like that, having to do nothing but tie and sew up wounds." He was so fond of a fight that he would want to be in it; and I concluded that we would let him fight while the fight was going on, and have a sword and pistols, and afterwards I could help him bandage the wounds.
Then I came back to Bigley, and began to think that, after all, it would be very queer for him to be fighting on one side and me on the other, and it did not seem natural, for we two had never had a serious quarrel, though I had had many a set-to with other lads, and had twice over given Bob Chowne black eyes, the last time when he gave me that terrible punch on the nose, when it bled so long that we all grew frightened, and determined to go to the doctor's, and it suddenly stopped.
I don't know how much more nonsense I should have thought if my father had not made a movement as if to get up, and that changed the current of my thoughts.
But he went on writing again, and this time I began watching a large chest that stood in one corner of the room, bound with clamps of iron, and it looked so heavy and strong that I concluded that it must be full of ingots of silver ready to send away.
I grew tired of looking at that box, and as my fancy did not seem disposed to run again upon fighting and defence, I sat listening to the scratching of my father's pen and the ticking of the clock, and then to the dull roar of the furnace, while mingled with it came the clattering of hammers, the creaking of the great windlass, and the rushing and plashing of falling water.
Just then there was a tap as of some one's knuckles at the door, and in obedience to a look from my father I got up and opened it, to turn quite red in the face, for there stood my old school-fellow about whom so much had been said--Bigley Uggleston..