“Nor mine. Nor mine,” cried half a dozen voices.
Hamlin looked from one to another, reading the same opinion in every face.
“No,” he said scornfully. “It is quite evident that it is not your idea of courage. Haven’t you sense enough to see that Clark showed a courage as much higher and finer than Crawford’s as his was higher than that of—a mad bull, I was going to say”; he stopped and half laughed, as he added, “That’s a poor comparison however, for I don’t think that Crawford’s courage was one whit higher or better than a mad bull’s.”
Hamlin was standing with his back to the door. A little stir, and a change in some of the faces turned towards the door, made him glance around to find Crawford himself standing just behind him with a scowl on his dark face.
“So,” he said, “I seem to be the interesting subject under discussion. Go on, go on. Pray don’t let me interrupt you.”
“I don’t mean to”; and as he spoke, Hamlin wheeled quickly around so as to face the other. “I’d just as soon, and in fact a little sooner, speak my mind to your face. Crawford, if I’ve heard the story straight, you did some mean, contemptible, cowardly things, yesterday. I think such doings are a disgrace to our section, and I tell you now once for all, that if this sort of thing can’t be stopped I shall ask for a transfer to some other section, and I shall tell Professor Keene just why I want a transfer, too.”
There was a moment of silence while Crawford, choking down his rage, looked from face to face to see on which side were the sympathies of the boys. Had any other than Hamlin said all this, Crawford would have either laughed it to scorn or answered by a sneer and a blow, but Hamlin was too popular and stood too high in the class to be treated in that way. He belonged, too, to a wealthy and influential family, and these facts weighed heavily with Crawford; so, though his eyes were full of sullen anger, he only said gruffly, “Seems to me you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. I gave that cad of a Clark a slap across the mouth which he was too cowardly to return. That’s all there is about it, and I don’t see, for my part, why you are taking it up, and making such a row over it, Hamlin.”
“I don’t know Clark very well,” replied Hamlin, “but I’ve never seen anything sneaky or cowardly about him, and I don’t believe he is either. I know a fellow always gets the name of a coward if he won’t pitch in and strike back like a prize fighter when anybody insults him; but I’m beginning to think that the honor that can only be proven by making a brute of one’s self, isn’t worth very much anyhow. But that blow of yours that Clark had the courage not to return, Crawford, was only one of the things that you were responsible for, yesterday, if all I’ve heard is true. You all know,” he went on, turning to the boys, “how often little Freeman is sick, and how much he is absent on that account. Perhaps some of you don’t know that he has no father, and that his mother is working a good deal harder than any woman ought to work, to keep him in school. Freeman himself is very anxious to get to work and help his mother, and the position he gets after he graduates will depend largely on his school record; yet you, Crawford, deliberately tried yesterday, to make him fail, when he knew his lesson perfectly, and not satisfied with that, you pitched into him after school and rolled him in mud and water in the street. It was a shame, Crawford—a little delicate chap like him, not half your size! I can’t see, for my part, how any decent fellow could have stood by and seen it done without interfering”; and Hamlin’s eyes blazed with righteous indignation as he looked around the circle.
“Oh, come now, Hamlin, you’re putting it on too thick,” said Crawford; “I”—but whispers of “Here comes Bobby!” cut short the talk, and the boys slipped into their seats as Mr. Horton entered the class-room.
“Bobby” was the class name for the teacher of section D.