back.

"I'm a coward!" he said, staring at the opposite wall. "I must be a
coward! If I weren't I would have opened that door."

Now, Dink had never fought a real fight. He had had a few
rough-and-tumble skirmishes, but a fight where you stood up and looked
a man in the whites of the eyes, a deliberate, planned-out fight, was
outside his knowledge, in the mists of the unknown. And so his
imagination--which later should be his strength--recoiled before that
unknown as it had recoiled the moment he stepped from the stage to
face his new judges; as it had recoiled in the hushed parlor before
the closed door of the head master's den, and again at the thought of
stepping into the batter's box and risking his head against the deadly
shoots of Nick Carter, of the Cleve. He had never fought, therefore he
was aghast at the fear of being afraid.

"Well, I won't run again," he said desperately. "I'll have it over
with--he can only lick me."

But he did run again, and often, despite all his resolves, impelled
always by the psychological precedent that he had run before.

The Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary made a regular
ceremony of it, raising a hue and cry at the sight of him and bursting
into derisive laughter after short chases.

Dink was miserable and now thoroughly frightened. He slunk into the
solitude of his own company, avoiding the disdainful looks of his
House mates. He knew now he was a coward and should never be anything
else. He did not blame Butsey, who scarcely spoke to him. All he
thought of was, by roundabout ways, to put off the dreadful hour when
either the Coffee-colored Angel or the White Mountain Canary should
catch him and beat him to a quivering, senseless pulp.

Then the unexpected happened. One day, cutting across fields to avoid
his persecutors, he was suddenly shut off by the White Mountain
Canary, who rose from ambush, jeering horribly. Cut off from the
Green, Dink returned post-haste up the village, when all at once the
Coffee-colored Angel closed in on him. Only one way of escape was open
to him, down an alley between two houses. With the Coffee-colored
Angel at his heels he dashed ahead, turned the corner of the house
and found himself caught in a blind area.

Whereupon he turned on the Coffee-colored Angel and slathered him,
drove him hither and thither with terrific blows, knocked him head
over heels, caught him by the throat and beat him against a wall,
rolled him on