them without question. My boy had always heard of one of these bullies,
whose very name, Buz Simpson, carried terror with it; but he had never
seen him, because he lived in the unknown region bordering on the river
south of the Thomas house. One day he suddenly appeared, when my boy was
playing marbles with some other fellows in front of the Falconer house,
attended by two or three other boys from below the Sycamore Grove. He
was small and insignificant, but such was the fear his name inspired
that my boy and his friends cowered before him, though some of them were
no mean fighters themselves. They seemed to know by instinct that this
was Buz Simpson, and they stood patiently by while he kicked their
marbles out of the ring and broke up their game, and, after staying
awhile to cover them with ignominy and insult, passed on with his
retainers to other fields of conquest. If it had been death to resist
him, they could not have dreamed less of doing so; and though this
outrage took place under my boy's own windows, and a single word would
have brought efficient aid (for the mere sight of any boy's mother could
put to flight a whole army of other boys), he never dreamed of calling
for help.

That would have been a weakness which would not only have marked him
forever as a cry-baby, but an indecorum too gross for words. It would
have been as if, when once the boys were playing trip at school, and a
big boy tripped him, and he lay quivering and panting on the ground, he
had got up as soon as he could catch his breath and gone in and told the
teacher; or as if, when the fellows were playing soak-about, and he got
hit in the pit of the stomach with a hard ball, he had complained of the
fellow who threw it. There were some things so base that a boy could not
do them; and what happened out of doors, and strictly within the boy's
world, had to be kept sacredly secret among the boys. For instance, if
you had been beguiled, as a little boy, into being the last in the game
of snap-the-whip, and the snap sent you rolling head over heels on the
hard ground, and skinned your nose and tore your trousers, you could cry
from the pain without disgrace, and some of the fellows would come up
and try to comfort you; but you were bound in honor not to appeal to the
teacher, and you were expected to use every device to get the blood off
you before you went in, and to hide the tear in your trousers. Of
course, the tear and the blood could not be