me took him by the hand. "I 'm a-goin' to take you," she said,
"to beg Willie Tompkins's pardon fur the way you did him."

Did the woman know what it meant to the boy? She could not, or her heart
would have turned against the cruelty. Fred was aghast. Beg his pardon!
A whipping was a thousand times better: indeed, it would be a mercy. He
began to protest, but was speedily silenced. The enforced silence,
however, did not cool his anger. He had done what other boys did. He had
acted in the only way that it seemed a boy could act under the
circumstances, and he had expected to be punished as his fellows were;
but this--this was awful. He clinched his hands until the nails dug into
the palms. His face was as pale as death. He sweated with the consuming
fire of impotent rage. He wished that he might run away somewhere where
he could hide and tear things and swear. For a moment only he
entertained the thought, and then a look into the determined face of the
woman at his side drove the thought away. To his childish eyes,
distorted by resentment, she was an implacable and relentless monster
who would follow him with punishment anywhere he might go.

And now they were at Billy Tompkins's door. They had passed through,
and he found himself saying mechanically the words which Miss Prime put
into his mouth, while his tormentor grinned from beside his mother's
chair. Then, after a few words between the women, in which he heard from
Mrs. Tompkins the mysterious words, "Oh, I don't blame you, Miss Hester;
I know that blood will tell," they passed out, and the grinning face of
Billy Tompkins was the last thing that Fred saw. It followed him home.
The hot tears fell from his eyes, but they did not quench the flames
that were consuming him. There is nothing so terrible as the just anger
of a child,--terrible in its very powerlessness. Polyphemus is a giant,
though the mountain hold him down.

Next morning, when Fred went to school, Billy Tompkins with a crowd of
boys about was waiting to deride him; but at sight of his face they
stopped. He walked straight up to his enemy and began striking him with
all his might.

"She made me beg your pardon, did she?" he gasped between the blows;
"well, you take that for it, and that." The boys had fallen back, and
Billy was attempting to defend himself.

"Mebbe she 'll make me do it again to-night. If she does, I 'll give you
some more o' this to-morrow, and every time I have to beg your pardon.