ur, ran all around the
square. A sound of shuffling feet and falling boxes might have been
heard as men here and there rose eagerly, their necks craned out toward
this swiftly made arena.

They saw the half-wit boy now advance upon Don Lane with a roar or bawl
of rage, his arms swinging flail-like. All expected to see the newcomer
turn and run. Not so. He simply stood for a half instant, sidestepped,
and again swung in close upon his foe. Old Silas Kneebone described the
affair many a time afterwards, at a time when Spring Valley knew more
about Don Lane.

"You see, the eejit, he gets up again, hollering, and he goes in again
at Dewdonny, bound for to knock his head off. But Dewdonny, he ducks
down like a regular prize-fighter--I hear tell, at colleges, them
athaletes they have to learn all them sort of things--and he put up a
fight like a regular old hand. But all the time he keeps hollering to
the crowd, 'Take him away! Take him away! Keep him off, I say! I don't
want to hit him!'

"Well, folks begun to laugh at Dewdonny then--before they knowed who he
was--thinking he was afraid of that eejit; yet it didn't seem like he
was, neither, for he didn't run away. At last he hits the eejit fair a
second time, and he knocks him down flat. Folks then begun to allow he
could hit him whenever he wanted to, and knock him down whenever he
pleased.

"Now, the eejit, he gets up and begins to beller like a calf. He puts
his hand on his face where Dewdonny Lane had done hit him the last time
or two and he hollers out, 'Pa, he hit me!'

"But his pa could only set up on the grass and shake his head. I reckon
old Eph was soberer then than he had been five minutes sooner. Say, that
boy had a punch like the kick of a full growed mule!

"Of course, you all know what happened then. It was then that old Man
Tarbush come in, seeing the boy had both of them two licked. He got up
his own nerve after that. So now he goes over there to the courthouse
ground, through the gate where they all was, and he lays his hand on
Dewdonny Lane and then on the eejit.

"'I arrest you both for disturbing of the peace,' says he then. 'Come on
now, in the name of the law.'

"'The law be damned!' says Dewdonny Lane then. 'Go take this man to
jail. Are you crazy--what do you mean by arresting me when I'm just
walking home with my mother? This wasn't my fault. I didn't want to hit
him.

"'Come on, Mom!' says he, and before Tarbush could help hisself he'd