“I don’t believe it,” declared Gene Skelding, at the fence. “He is playing a game for sympathy.”
“You’re a liar!” said Hock Mason promptly.
Once Mason had been the bully of the freshman class. Of late, he was so quiet that no one could have dreamed that he had ever been a terror. Skelding knew little about Mason.
“What do you say?” he snarled. “Do you call me a——”
“A liar, sah,” said the man from South Carolina. “Is that plain enough for you to understand, sah?”
“It is!” returned Skelding. “Take that for your insult!”
Slap! he struck Mason with his cane.
It was a stinging blow, and the Southerner was staggered. He came back with remarkable suddenness, and——
Crack! His fist landed between Skelding’s eyes, knocking the fellow clean over the fence.
“Any time, sah,” said Mason, as Gene picked himself up--“any time that you wish to pursue this little matter farther, I shall be pleased to accommodate you, sah.”