the alternate, too! Well,
you're a cur, Bill Denman. Go ahead and report."

They were now on a block bounded by vacant lots, and no one was within
sight. Denman stopped, threw off his coat, and said:

"No, I'll not report your opinion, but--you square yourself, Jack
Forsythe, and I'll show you the kind of cur I am."

Forsythe turned, saw the anger in Denman's eyes, and promptly shed his
coat.

It was a short fight, of one round only. Each fought courageously, and
with such fistic skill as schoolboys acquire, and each was equal to the
other in strength; but one possessed about an inch longer reach than the
other, which decided the battle.

Denman, with nose bleeding and both eyes closing, went down at last, and
could not arise, nor even see the necessity of rising. But soon his
brain cleared, and he staggered to his feet, his head throbbing
viciously and his face and clothing smeared with blood from his nose,
to see between puffed eyelids the erect figure of Forsythe swaggering
around a distant corner. He stanched the blood with his handkerchief,
but as there was not a brook, a ditch, or a puddle in the neighborhood,
he could only go home as he was, trusting that he would meet no one.

"Licked!" he muttered. "For the first time in my life, too! What'll the
old gentleman and mother say?"

What the father and mother might say, or what they did say, has no part
in this story; but what another person said may have a place and value,
and will be given here. This person was the only one he met before
reaching home--a very small person, about thirteen years old, with big
gray eyes and long dark ringlets, who ran across the street to look at
him.

"Why, Billie Denman!" she cried, shocked and anxious. "What has happened
to you? Run over?"

"No, Florrie," he answered, painfully. "I've been licked. I had a
fight."

"But don't you know it's wrong to fight, Billie?"

"Maybe," answered Denman, trying to get more blood from his face to the
already saturated handkerchief. "But we all do wrong--sometimes."

The child planted herself directly before him, and looked chidingly into
his discolored and disfigured face.

"Billie Denman," she said, shaking a small finger at him, "of course I'm
sorry, but, if you have been fighting when you know it is wrong,
why--why, it served you right."

Had he not been aching in every joint, his nose, his lips, and his eyes,
this unjust speech might have amused him. As it was he answered t