CHAPTER XVII. SEYMOUR'S ONE SUCCESS
This polite epistle, it may be mentioned, was a revised version of the one which Drummond originally wrote in reply to Sheen's request. His first impulse had been to answer in the four brief words, "Don't be a fool"; for Sheen's letter had struck him as nothing more than a contemptible piece of posing, and he had all the hatred for poses which is a characteristic of the plain and straightforward type of mind. It seemed to him that Sheen, as he expressed it to himself, was trying to "do the boy hero". In the school library, which had been stocked during the dark ages, when that type of story was popular, there were numerous school stories in which the hero retrieved a rocky reputation by thrashing the bully, displaying in the encounter an intuitive but
