“Right on the nose!”
“A clean middle shot!”
“A good plunk!”
These cries greeted Joe’s last effort, and, sure enough, when several lads ran to get a closer view of the barrel, they came back to report that the ball was exactly in the centre of the head.
“Say, you’re a wonder!” exclaimed Peaches, admiringly.
“Who’s a wonder?” inquired a new voice, and a tall heavily-built lad, with rather a coarse and brutal face, sauntered up to the group. “Who’s been doing wonderful stunts, Peaches?”
“Joe Matson here. He hit the barrel head three times out of three, and the best any of us could do was once. Besides, Joe poked it in the exact centre once, and nearly twice.”
“That’s easy,” spoke the newcomer, with a sneer in his voice.
“Let’s see you do it, Shell,” invited George Bland.
“Go on, Hiram, show ’em what you can do,” urged Luke Fodick, who was a sort of toady to Hiram Shell, the school bully, if ever there was one.