Ed CHURCH left Lide talking with the girls in the schoolhouse while he went back to the waggon shed to get Grey Eagle and bring him and the cutter to the door. As Ed was in the entry of the schoolhouse he was stopped by little Joe Barnes.

“Say! Fan Brown's out there waitin' for you.”

“What about Fan Brown?” asked Ed Church.

Fan Brown was the bully of Hinckley. He boasted that he could thrash any man between Bath Lakes and the Hinckley Ridge.

“He says he's goin' to wallop you for shootin' his dawg last summer,” said little Joe Barnes.

“Joe, will you do something for me?” asked Ed.

“Yep!”

“You go and tell Lide Lee in there that I'm goin' over to Square Chanler's to get a neck-yoke he borrowed and I'll be right back. Tell her to wait in the school-house till I come.”

“He's afraid of Fan Brown and is runnin' over to Square Chanler's to get the constable,” said little Joe Barnes to himself. For this he despised Ed Church very much, but went in and delivered the message.

“All right!” said Lide, and then went on gossiping with the girls.

Ed Church stepped out of the schoolhouse and started for the horse-sheds.

He noticed a knot of men standing at the rear corner of the building; among them he discerned the stocky, bull-necked bully of Hinckley, Fan Brown.

“Here he comes now!” said one, as Ed approached.

“Let him come!” gritted the bully; “I'll fix him! I'll show him whose dog he's been shootin! As fine a coon dog, boys, as ever went into a corn field. He shot him, and I ain't goin' back to Hinckley till I mash his face.”

“What's the row here?” said Ed Church, walking straight to the little huddle about Fan Brown. His tones were brittle and bold; a note of ready war ran through them. Not at all the voice in which he talked to Lide. “I understand somebody's lookin' for me. Who is it?”

“It's me, by G—d! You killed my dog last summer, and I'm goin'——”

“No, you ain't,” said Ed, interrupting; “you ain't goin' to do a thing. You may be the bully of Hinckley, Fan Brown, but you can't scare me. Your dog was killin' sheep; he was a good deal like you; but bein' a dog I could shoot him.”

“Yes, and I ain't goin' back to Hinckley until I maul you so you won't shoot another dog as long as you live.”

“Enough said!” replied Ed, “come right down in the hollow back of the horse sheds, where the folks won't see, and do it.”

Just then a small, meagre man approached. He walked with a lounging gait, and when he spoke he had a thin, mealy voice.

“What's the matter here?” piped the meagre little man.

His name was Dick Bond. He was renowned widely as a wrestler. Gladiators had come from far and near, and at town meetings and barn raisings, wrestled with little Dick Bond. Where a hundred tried not one succeeded.

He had not lost a “fall” for four years. His skill had given birth to a half proverb, and when somebody said he would do something, and somebody else doubted it, the latter would observe with laughing scorn: “Yes; you'll do it when somebody throws Dick Bond.”

Such was the fell repute of this invincible little man that when his shrill, light voice made the inquiry chronicled, a silence fell on the crowd and no one answered.

“Who's goin' to fight?” asked Dick Bond more pointedly.

“I'm goin' to fight Fan Brown,” said Ed.

There was a load of ferocity in the way he said it, which showed that Ed, himself, had a latent hunger for battle.

“I guess I'll go 'long and see it,” said Dick Bond pipingly.

“How do you want to fight?” asked Ed of Fan Brown when each had buttoned up his coat tight to the chin. “Stand up, or rough and tumble?”

“Rough and tumble,” said Fan Brown savagely.

“All right!”

“Now, boys,” said Dick Bond when all was ready, “I'll give the word and then you're goin' to fight until one of you says 'enough.' And remember! there's no bitin' no gougin', no scratchin'.”

“Bitin' goes?” declared Fan Brown, in a fashion of savage interrogatory.

“Bitin' don't go!” replied the lean little referee, “and if you offer to bite or gouge, Fan Brown, I'll break your neck. You'll never go back to Hinckley short of being carried in a blanket.”