The proposition was received with favor, but one of them looked furtively around and noticed me. His manner showed that he was in fear of my stopping their cruel sport.
“Who cares for him?” said one of the party, in a blustering voice that it was meant I should hear; “he’s nobody. I’ll tell him my father is one of the richest men in Boston and is going to be governor some day.”
“And I’ll let him know that my father has taken me and our folks all over Yurrup. Pooh! he daresn’t say anything.”
Soothed by this conclusion, the three began throwing stones at Ben.
Ben was close at hand, and the first boy who flung a missile poised and aimed with such deliberation that I was sure Ben would be hit; but the stone missed him by fully ten feet. It was not until two more had been thrown that Ben awoke to the fact that he was serving as a target for the city youth.
“What are you fellers doing?” he demanded, looking angrily toward them. “Who you trying to hit?”
They laughed, and the tallest answered, as he flung another missile with great energy but poor aim:
“We’re going to knock you off that log, Country! What are you going to do about it?”
“I’ll show you mighty soon,” answered the sturdy lad, who straightway pushed the long pole in his hand against the bottom of the river, so as to drive the log in toward the shore where his persecutors stood pelting him.
There was something so plucky in all this that several others stopped to watch the result. I secretly resolved that if Ben got the worst of it (as seemed inevitable against three boys), I would interfere at the critical moment.