“Come on,” said Don, impatiently. “I am getting cold standing here in my shirt-sleeves. Give me a little exercise to warm me up. Remember I wasn’t born as near the Arctic Circle as you fellows were, and for that reason I can’t stand the cold as well. Hurry up, somebody—anybody who thinks he was insulted by the words I uttered this morning.”
Driven almost to desperation by this challenge, which he knew was addressed to himself, and which seemed to imply that his prospective antagonist placed a very low estimate upon his powers, Duncan pulled off both his coats, assumed a threatening attitude and advanced toward Don, who extended his hand in the most friendly manner. The bully, believing that Don wanted to parley with him, took the proffered hand in his own, and in a second more arose in the air as if an exceedingly strong spring had suddenly uncoiled itself under his feet. When he came down again he measured his full length on the ice, landing in such dangerous proximity to the hole that had been cut for the poor student’s benefit, that his uniform cap fell into it.
Everybody was struck motionless and dumb with amazement. The bully was so bewildered that he did not get upon his feet again immediately, and the poor student forgot to shiver.
Duncan’s Unexpected Overthrow.
CHAPTER IV.
THE NEW YORK BOOT-BLACK.
“Take your hands off those boys,” said Don, who was in just the right humor to make a scattering among Fisher’s crowd of friends. “Release them both and do it at once, or I will pitch the last one of you into that hole before you can say ‘General Jackson’ with your mouths open. Come over here, Bert.”
He stepped up and took the prisoner by the arm, and his four guards surrendered him without a word of protest. The magical manner in which Don had floored the biggest bully in school, before whom no boy in Bridgeport had ever been able to stand for a minute, either with boxing-gloves or bare fists, and the ease with which he had done it, astounded them. They had never seen anything like it before, and there was something very mysterious in it. Did not this backwoodsman have other equally bewildering tactics at his command which he could bring into play if he were crowded upon? Probably he had, and so the best thing they could do was to let him alone.
“Your name is Sam Arkwright, is it not?” said Don, taking one of the boy’s blue-cold hands in both his own warm ones. “I thought I had heard you answer to that name at roll-call. I am a plebe too, and so we’ll stand together. Put on these gloves and come with me. You will freeze if you stay here any longer. As for you,” he added, waving his hand toward the students to show that he included them all in the remarks he was about to make, “you are a pack of cowards, and I can whip the best man among you right here and now. Pick him out and let me take a look at him.”
“I am good for the best of them if they will come one at a time,” said Sam. “But I give in to a dozen when they all jump on me at once.”