over a fellow's bed) and the yellow
leather belt and open pouch for cartridges--well, I wouldn't have taken
the fanciest price for myself at that moment--I really wouldn't. If it
had been at Earl's Court, they would have marked me _Hors Concours_,
and set me to judge the other exhibits!

Well, of course, these fellows had never seen the funny round black dot
a loaded revolver makes when it is pointed square at your right eye and
the fellow behind looks like pulling the trigger. And I tell you they
scurried back, fifty yards at least, and some of the less keen even
began to sneak off. Pretty soon they all did so. I think they felt
that they had been behaving foolishly.

But what they felt was nothing to what _I_ did a moment after.

You see, my father didn't know what had been happening down below. He
couldn't see, for one thing. The jut of the porch hid my warlike array
and bold defence. So he couldn't understand who the--umph--was down
there. To make out he came forward and leaned over the stone cornice
at the end of the railings, with Elsie on one side of him and Harriet
Caw on the other.

I stood up as noble as the boy on the burning deck or Fitz-James, when
he said--

"Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I!"

Or, at any rate, something like that. But _my_ feet were really on my
native doorstep, while as for Fitz-James--my father says that, whether
the rock flew or not, he had no title to it that could stand the least
sniff of law.

Before my father spoke to me, both Elsie and Harriet Caw thought that I
looked "just too heroic." This I heard on good authority, and it
pleased me, for that was the exact effect I was trying to produce.
Elsie was such a brick as to swear that she thought so even after, and
to this day she sticks to it. Girls have some good points.

But it was awful enough at the time.

"Joe," shouted my father, and I could see his face red and threatening
above me, with the effort of leaning so far over, "if you do not put up
that popgun and come in the house directly, I will come out with a cane
and thrash you within an inch of your life!"

He even went on to give particulars, which I think was mean of him in
the circumstances. But no fellow can argue with his father--at least,
not with one like mine--so I stepped round to the door. My father met
me, took the revolver away from me, and made as if he would box my
ears. Last of all, he tol