“But the fellow needs a lesson!” rasped the man with the eye that persisted in looking in the wrong direction. “I think I’ll hit him once or twice.”
“My gracious!” fluttered Gallup. “Hev ye gotter hit him real hard? Don’t yeou s’pose he might hit back?”
“Let him try it!” came fiercely from the giant.
“Be yeou goin’ to hit where ye’re lookin’?” asked the country youth. “Cause ef yeou be, I’d advise that man with the wart on his nose to move.”
At this the man who owned the wart dodged with a suddenness that provoked a titter of laughter from several witnesses.
Ephraim was adding to the comedy of the affair, and Frank bit his lips to keep from laughing outright, despite his annoyance over being thus detained.
The big man with the crooked eye flourished his fists in the air in a most belligerent fashion, and instantly Merriwell gazed at him sternly, saying:
“Be careful, sir! You are imperiling the lives of everyone near you, and you may strain yourself.”
“That’s right, by gum!” nodded Gallup, whimsically. “Yeou may warp one of them air arms, flingin’ it araound so gol-darn permiscuous like.”
“Here comes an officer!”