A wavering look of indecision crept into Sam Hinkley’s pug-nosed countenance. He would have liked to have the last few moments over again. He felt that he would have acted differently. But he tried to brazen it out.

“You strolling vagabond from goodness knows where, take that!”

It was a vicious blow, with plenty of force behind it, for Sam, although a bully and not possessed of an overabundance of courage, was still wiry and well muscled. But to his surprise his blow did not land. It should have collided with Ned’s chin, but when its force was expended, Ned was not there.

He had stepped neatly aside and allowed Sam to launch his thunderbolt harmlessly. Sam’s friends, grouped beneath the veranda on the sidewalk, closed into a compact little crowd. Plainly Sam was not going to carry all before him as had been his habit hitherto. His cronies saw this at once and some of them inwardly rejoiced.

The office of the little hotel was deserted, and nobody interfered. Sam gathered himself together to renew the combat. His brow grew black. Ned stood waiting. He made no attempt to defend himself. He merely eyed Sam Hinkley with a look of contempt that maddened that pugnacious bully.

Sam eyed his opponent viciously.

“Well?” queried Ned.

“Thought you were going to fight!” roared Sam.

“As I told you before, I’m not a fighter.”

Sam rashly interpreted this as being a sign of weakness. He rushed in once more, swinging his big fists with more vigor than science. Once more Will-o’-the-Wisp Ned was not where he ought to have been, and Sam, carried off his feet by the vigor of his unopposed onslaught, collided with a chair, tripped, and fell headlong on the floor to the porch.

This time the laugh that went up was not at Ned’s expense. The boy stood in the same quiet attitude while Sam, his face crimson with anger and mortification, gathered himself up.

“This ain’t fighting!” he bellowed angrily.

“You can call it anything you like—an acrobatic performance if you wish,” rejoined Ned, without raising his voice or changing his position.

Now there is nothing more irritating than to lose your temper and to make an exhibition of yourself, while the one your rage is directed at stands as steady and unmoved as a rock, hardly deigning to reply to either threats or onslaughts.

Sam was almost beside himself with rage as, with blazing eyes, he made another dash at Ned. This time Ned did not step aside. He ducked under Sam’s terrific left, and coming up, struck the bully a blow in the ribs that caused that worthy to emit a sound resembling:

“Oof!”

Ned took advantage of the momentary pause in hostilities to speak.

“Look here, Hinkley,” said he. “I’m not a ruffian, and I don’t like fighting. We’ll call this off right here and now, if you say so. I’m willing—what do you say?”

“That I’m going to give you the licking of your life!” roared out the enraged Sam.

Again he rushed in, his arms working like twin piston rods. This time Ned did not avoid the other’s rush. There was a rapid exchange of blows, and then suddenly—so suddenly that nobody saw just how it had happened, Sam Hinkley’s head was jerked back.

Whack! Ned had taken advantage of a fraction of a second when the other was off his guard and landed a stinging blow full on Sam’s pug nose. With a roar of anger Sam rushed in to retaliate. This time Ned was not quite quick enough. He stepped sideways to avoid the other’s onrush, but his foot slipped, and before he could recover his balance a heavy blow from Sam’s ponderous fist sent him spinning across the porch.

Sam’s adherents in the crowd watching the two lads set up a shout of delight. A broad grin overspread Sam’s face.

“Guess that finishes the lesson,” he jeered.

“On the contrary it’s only just begun,” retaliated Ned, and before Sam knew just what had happened, two smart blows had rattled against his ribs, the force of them making his teeth chatter as if with the cold.

But Sam speedily recovered himself, and for the next few minutes it was give and take, with the odds rather against Ned, who was lighter of build than the bully, and who was constantly forced back by the latter’s rushes. Sam began to think it was all over.

“Well, Mr. Manners’ Teacher, how about you now?” he sneered tauntingly.

Ned did not reply, but he watched Sam like a cat. He saw that the bully was beginning to wear out under the fast work of the last few minutes. His chest was heaving and his breath came pantingly. He guessed that Sam would have been glad to have called “quits” then and there.

But while Ned might have been willing enough not to fight at the beginning of the battle, his blood was up now, and he was determined to see the thing through. He despised fighting as being ruffianly and unnecessary, but, in a case like the present, he felt that if he allowed Sam Hinkley to walk over him, the latter would make it next to impossible for him to remain in Nestorville.

He avoided another of Sam’s bull-like rushes with an agile step backward. As Sam’s blow missed, Ned could hear him give a loud grunt, a sound that told he was tiring.

“I’m wearing him down,” thought Ned, and watched carefully for an opening that might afford him a chance of terminating the battle.

Sam “rushed” Ned again. This time he, too, appeared to be desirous of ending the fight by a blow that would take all the fight out of his lightly built opponent. But his blow landed on thin air.

Ned’s opportunity had come. His fist shot out like a streak of lightning. It struck Sam under the chin, lifting him off his feet. He toppled and fell backward, landing among the chairs with a crash that sounded like a cook-stove falling downstairs.

“That settles him!” cried some of the crowd of boys that had gathered, and “settle” Sam it did, in more senses than one, for, aroused by the crash of his fall, the bully’s father issued from[Pg 67]
[Pg 68]
[Pg 69] the hotel and seizing his offspring by the scruff of the neck, angrily bade him get inside.

“It wasn’t altogether his fault,” explained Ned. “I had his chair, you see, and—”

“That’ll do, young feller,” said the elder Hinkley brusquely, “that’s not the first time it’s happened. Sam had a licking coming to him and he got it. I ain’t got nothing to say, ’cepting that supper’s ready when you are.”

And in this eventful manner ended Ned’s first day in Nestorville. It had surely been an eventful one, thought the boy, as he reviewed the various experiences of the last twelve hours before turning into bed.

He was just about to turn out the light when his attention was attracted to the door-sill. Something white was being shoved under the door into the room. It was a folded bit of paper.

Ned sprang forward and picked it up. It was, as he had guessed, a note. He opened it, and as he perused its contents, a smile of good-natured contempt came over his face. This is what he read:

“You think you are smart, but you ain’t through with me yet. I’ll fix you and when I do I’ll fix you good. S. Hinkley.”

“Too bad,” said Ned to himself, as he finished reading. “I’ve not so many friends that I want to make any enemies. But after all, the quarrel was not of my making and I don’t intend to allow Sam Hinkley’s threats to worry me.”