“You take care!” raged Hunk. “I won’t have you calling me names! I want you to understand that, too. Who are you? You’re nothing but the son of a jail-bird!”
“Go for him, Hunk!” urged Spotty Davis, his voice making a whistling sound through the space left by his missing teeth. “Soak him a good one!”
“I’ll soak him if he ever puts his hands on me again,” declared Rollins, who was desirous of maintaining his reputation, yet hesitated before that dangerous look on Stone’s face. “I don’t care to fight with no low fellow like him.”
“Hunk’s scared of him,” cried one of the boys, and then the others groaned in derision.
Stung by this, the bully roared, “I’ll show you!” and made a jump and a swinging blow at Ben. His arm was knocked aside, and Stone’s heavy fist landed with terrible violence on his chin, sending him to the ground in a twinkling.
The boys uttered exclamations of astonishment.
With his fists clenched and his uncomely face awesome to look upon, Ben Stone took one step and stood over Rollins, waiting for him to rise. It was thus that Prof. Richardson saw them as he pushed through the gathering of boys. Without pausing, he placed himself between them, and turned on Ben.
“It has not taken you very long, Stone,” he said, in a manner that made Ben shrink and shiver, “to demonstrate beyond question that what Mr. Hayden told me about you is true. I told you it is my custom to judge every boy by his acts and by what he proves himself to be. For all of your apparently sincere promise to me a short time ago, you have thus quickly shown your true character, and I shall act on what I have seen.”
“He hit me, sir,” Hunk hastened to explain, having risen to his feet. “He came right in here and pushed me, and then he hit me.”
Ben opened his lips to justify himself. “Professor, if you’ll let me explain——”