There was still another sedative, and by no means the least influential. There was a circle of friends around James, not merely those we have named, but several others from both districts, of like sympathies and principles; and though far inferior in numbers, they comprised the best minds and the most energetic persons of the whole school, and were actuated by a sentiment of chivalry, taking the part of the oppressed, that made them doubly formidable.
Arthur Nevins was in his twentieth year; the most, athletic boy in the school, the leader in all exercises that tested strength and endurance, and resolute as a lion. There was no doubt which side he would take, in any affair that Peter or Bertie Whitman were concerned in.
As, however, this feeling of enmity increased, and grew all the faster from being causeless, and open rupture being considered imprudent,—it found vent at first in ill-natured remarks, slurs and gibes, as, for instance: “There goes the redemptioner.” “Here comes ‘work’us;’ got any cold vittles?” “Any old clo’es?”
At noon, when James was in the schoolhouse, and his enemies outside, one boy would shout to another so as to be heard all over the schoolhouse,—“I say, John Edmands, do you know how to pick oakum?”
“No.”
“Well, then ask Redemptioner. He learned the trade in the work’us, and he’s a superior workman.”
Did James leave the schoolroom at recess, half a dozen snowballs flung by nobody would hit him. When at night he had his books under his arm going home a volley of balls would cover his books with snow.
James endured all this in silence, and without manifesting the least resentment, which only served to encourage imposition. Not so, however the Whitmans, and the Nevins boys, and the Valentines; when either of those caught a boy flinging a snowball at James, they returned it with interest, and Arthur Nevins generally had an icy one at hand.
This brought on a general snowball fight, under cover of which James, as his enemies said, “meeched” off.
It was now the turn of James to build the fire. Orcutt, who built it the morning previous, had put on a very large rock-maple log, which, being but half burnt out, gave promise of a noble bed of coals for James to kindle his fire with in the morning.