Therefore he submitted to the cruel and uncalled-for punishment without a word, although every blow caused severe pain, and when Bill had pummelled him for fully five minutes the other boys interrupted by saying,—
"Come, let up on him! That's enough for the first, an' if he ain't out of town by to-morrow we'll give him another dose. Let's cool him off in the pond."
Jack struggled in vain against this last indignity. It was a simple matter for the three boys to lift and throw him half a dozen feet from the bank into the muddy water.
There was no danger the little fellow would be drowned, for the duck pond was not more than two feet deep, and as his assailants ran hurriedly away he scrambled out, presenting a sorry sight as he stood on the firm ground once more with mud and water dripping from his face and every angle of his garments.
Jack was as sore in mind as he was in body; but even while making his way toward the house he did not neglect any precautions which might prevent his being seen by Farmer Pratt.
He skirted around through the straggling line of alders until he reached the rear of the barn, and then, coming across crumple-horn's yard, he was confronted by Aunt Nancy, who had just emerged from the shed.
"For mercy's sake!" the little woman screamed, raising her hands in dismay as she surveyed the woe-begone Jack, who looked more like a misshapen pillar of mud than a boy. "Where have you been, and what have you done to yourself? It is strange that boys will be forever mussing in the dirt. I thought I'd had some bad ones here, but you beat anything I ever saw! Why, you must have been rolling in the pond to get yourself in such a condition."
"Yes, ma'am, I have," Jack replied meekly as he again tried to brush the mud from his face, but only succeeded in grinding it in more deeply.
"What's the matter with your nose? It's bleeding!" Aunt Nancy screamed in her excitement; while Louis, who was sitting on the grass near the broad doorstep, crowed and laughed as if fancying she was talking to him.
"Three fellers out there tried to make me promise I'd go away before to-morrow night, an' when I wouldn't, they gave me an awful poundin'. Then the fun was wound up by throwin' me in the pond."