Hickey, thus deprived of all support, remained defiant.
"May I ask," he said indignantly, "why I am picked out?"
"Hicks," said Mr. Tapping sternly, without replying to the question, "I know pretty well who was the ringleader in this, and other things that have been going on in the past. I warn you, my boy, I shall keep my eye on you from this time forth. That's all I want to say to you. Look out for yourself!"
Hickey could hardly restrain the tears. He went out with deadly wrath boiling in his heart. The idea of singling him out from the whole house in that way! So then every hand was against him; he had no security; he was marked for suspicion, his downfall determined upon!
For one brief moment his spirit, the spirit of indomitable, battling boyhood, failed him, and he felt the grey impossibility of contending against tyrants. But only a moment, and then with a return of the old fighting spirit he suddenly conceived the idea of single-handedly defying the whole organised hereditary and intrenched tyranny that sought to crush him, of matching his wits against the hydra despotism, perhaps, going down gloriously like Spartacus, for the cause, but leaving behind a name that should roll down the generations of future boys.
