As the running boys neared the two, Snath caught sight of them, and a look of disappointment, not unmixed with fear, came into his small, pale eyes. For a moment he appeared as though about to slink away, but he thought better of it and stood his ground.
“What’s going on?” asked Bobby, as his eyes went from one to the other.
“Don’t know that that’s any of your business,” growled Snath, a pasty-faced, loose-jawed youth, with mean eyes set too close together.
“We’ll make it our business, you big bully,” Fred was beginning, when Bobby placed a restraining hand on his chum’s arm.
“Just a minute, Fred,” he said. “Let’s hear what Cartier has to say about it,” he went on, turning to the other boy. “How about it, Lee?”
“I was passing by him when he told me to take off my cap to him,” replied Lee Cartier, a slender, dark-eyed boy with a clean-cut, intelligent face. “I told him I wouldn’t and then he grabbed it and threw it on the ground. He’s standing on it now,” and he pointed to the crumpled cap under the bully’s feet.
“Suppose you let Lee have his cap, Snath,” said Bobby.
“Suppose I don’t,” snarled the bully doggedly.
“Then we’ll make you,” Fred burst out hotly, his face almost as red as the fiery hair combined with a fiery temper that had gained for him the nickname of “Ginger.”
But again Bobby intervened.