such stiffness. Each individual muscle in his whole body protested when
called upon to move. His fingers were badly swollen, and it was agony to
clasp and unclasp them; while his arms were sore from wrist to elbow.
This, he said to himself, was caused by the many blows which he had
warded off from his face and body. He wondered if Brick Simpson was in
similar plight, and the thought of their mutual misery made him feel a
certain kinship for that redoubtable young ruffian.

When he entered the school-yard he quickly became aware that he was
the center of attraction for all eyes. The boys crowded around in an
awe-stricken way, and even his classmates and those with whom he was
well acquainted looked at him with a certain respect he had never
seen before.

CHAPTER VI

EXAMINATION DAY

It was plain that Fred and Charley had spread the news of their descent
into the Pit, and of their battle with the Simpson clan and the Fishes.
He heard the nine-o'clock bell with feelings of relief, and passed into
the school, a mark for admiring glances from all the boys. The girls,
too, looked at him in a timid and fearful way--as they might have looked
at Daniel when he came out of the lions' den, Joe thought, or at David
after his battle with Goliath. It made him uncomfortable and painfully
self-conscious, this hero-worshiping, and he wished heartily that they
would look in some other direction for a change.

Soon they did look in another direction. While big sheets of foolscap
were being distributed to every desk, Miss Wilson, the teacher (an
austere-looking young woman who went through the world as though it
were a refrigerator, and who, even on the warmest days in the classroom,
was to be found with a shawl or cape about her shoulders), arose, and
on the blackboard where all could see wrote the Roman numeral "I." Every
eye, and there were fifty pairs of them, hung with expectancy upon her
hand, and in the pause that followed the room was quiet as the grave.

Underneath the Roman numeral "I" she wrote: "_(a) What were the laws
of Draco? (b) Why did an Athenian orator say that they were written
'not in ink, but in blood'?_"

Forty-nine heads bent down and forty-nine pens scratched lustily across
as many sheets of foolscap. Joe's head alone remained up, and he regarded
the blackboard with so blank a stare that Miss Wilson, glancing over her
shoulder after having written "II," stopped to look at him. Then she
wrote:

"