an instant, clamorous for battle. His hands and
clothes were plastered with filth.

"I'm goin' to lick the stuffin' out of you," he bellowed.

Jeff said nothing. He was very white. His fingers worked nervously.

"Yah! Yah! He's scared," the mob jeered.

Jeff was. In that circle of hostile faces he found no sympathy. He had
to stand up to the bully of the class, a boy who could have given him
fifteen pounds. Looking around for help, he saw that none was at hand.
The thin legs of the rescued Italian girl were flashing down the street.
On the steps of the big house of P. C. Frome a six-year-old little one
was standing with her nurse. Nobody else was in sight except his cousin,
James, and the Apaches.

"You're goin' to get the maulin' of your life," Ned Merrill promised as
he slipped out of his coat. "Webber'll lick you if he finds out you been
fightin'," James Farnum prophesied cheerfully to his cousin. He intended
to do his duty in the way of protest and then watch the fight.

Ned worked his wiry little foe to the fence and pummeled him. Jeff
ducked and backed out of danger. Keeping to the defensive, he was being
badly punished. Once he slipped in the mud and went down, but he was up
again before his slower antagonist could close with him. Blood streamed
from his nose. His lip was gashed. Under the buffeting he was getting
his head began to sing.

"Punch him good, Ned," one of the champion's friends advised.

"You bet he is," another chortled.

Their jeers had an unexpected effect. Jeff's fears were blotted out by
his desperate need. Some spark of the fighting edge, inherited from
his father, was fanned to a flame in the heart of the bruised little
warrior. Like a tiger cat he leaped for Ned's throat, twisted his slim
legs round the sturdy ones of his enemy, and went down with him in a
heap.

Jeff landed on the bottom, but like an eel he squirmed to the top before
the other had time to get set. The champion's patrician head was thumped
down into the mud and a knobby little fist played a painful tattoo on
his mouth and cheek.

"Take him off! Take him off!" Merrill shrieked after he had tried in
vain to roll away the incubus clamped like a vise to his body.

His henchmen ran forward to obey. An unexpected intervention stopped
them. A one-armed little man who had drifted down the street in time to
see part of the fracas pushed forward.

"I reckon not just yet. Goliath's had a turn. Now David gets his."

"Le