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BOTCHAN


CHAPTER XI.

The next morning on awakening I felt pains all over my body, due, I thought, to having had no fight for a long time. This is not creditable to my fame as regards fighting, so I thought while in bed, when the old lady brought me a copy of the Shikoku Shimbun. I felt so weak as to need some effort even reaching for the paper. But what should be man so easily upset by such a trifling affair,–so I forced myself to turn in bed, and, opening its second page, I was surprised. There was the whole story of the fight of yesterday in print. Not that I was surprised by the news of the fight having been published, but it said that one teacher Hotta of the Middle School and one certain saucy Somebody, recently from Tokyo, of the same institution, not only started this trouble by inciting the students, but were actually present at the scene of the trouble, directing the students and engaged themselves against the students of the

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