w the boy leaping back and forth
across the track, with his dog beside him; he was shouting and his dog
barking furiously; those screams and entreaties came from within the
shadow. Westover plunged down the lane headlong, with a speed that
gathered at each bound, and that almost flung him on his face when he
reached the level where the boy and the dog were dancing back and forth
across the road. Then he saw, crouching in the edge of the wood, a
little girl, who was uttering the appeals he had heard, and clinging to
her, with a face of frantic terror, a child of five or six years;
her cries had grown hoarse, and had a hard, mechanical action as they
followed one another. They were really in no danger, for the boy held
his dog tight by his collar, and was merely delighting himself with
their terror.

The painter hurled himself upon him, and, with a quick grip upon his
collar, gave him half a dozen flat-handed blows wherever he could plant
them and then flung him reeling away.

"You infernal little ruffian!" he roared at him; and the sound of his
voice was enough for the dog; he began to scale the hill-side toward the
house without a moment's stay.

The children still crouched together, and Westover could hardly make
them understand that they were in his keeping when he bent over them
and bade them not be frightened. The little girl set about wiping
the child's eyes on her apron in a motherly fashion; her own were dry
enough, and Westover fancied there was more of fury than of fright in
her face. She seemed lost to any sense of his presence, and kept on
talking fiercely to herself, while she put the little boy in order, like
an indignant woman.

"Great, mean, ugly thing! I'll tell the teacher on him, that's what I
will, as soon as ever school begins. I'll see if he can come round with
that dog of his scaring folks! I wouldn't 'a' been a bit afraid if it
hadn't 'a' been for Franky. Don't cry any more, Franky. Don't you see
they're gone? I presume he thinks it smart to scare a little boy and a
girl. If I was a boy once, I'd show him!"

She made no sign of gratitude to Westover: as far as any recognition
from her was concerned, his intervention was something as impersonal as
if it had been a thunder-bolt falling upon her enemies from the sky.

"Where do you live?" he asked. "I'll go home with you if you'll tell me
where you live."

She looked up at him in a daze, and Westover heard the Durgin boy
saying: "She lives r