Strange to relate, Pete Connegan did not kill him. For a moment he stood staring at his ragged assailant and then he said, "Be gorry, ye got some nerve, annyhow."
"If I done a thing I'd see it through, I would; I ain't scared," Tom had answered.
"If ye'll dance ye'll pay the fiddler, hey?" his victim had asked in undisguised admiration....
Oh well, it was all a long time ago and the only points worth remembering about it are that Tom Slade didn't run, that he was ready to see the thing through no matter if it left him sprawling in the gutter, and that he and the burly truck driver had thereafter been good friends. Now Tom was an ex-scout and a returned soldier and Pete was janitor of the big bank building.
He was sweeping off the walk in front of the bank as Tom passed in.
"Hello, Tommy boy," he said cheerily. "How are ye these days?"
"I'm pretty well," Tom said, in the dull matter-of-fact way that he had, "only I get mixed up sometimes and sometimes I forget."
"Phwill ye evver fergit how you soaked me with the tomater?" Pete asked, leaning on his broom.
"It wasn't hard, because I was standing so near," Tom said, always anxious to belittle his own skill.
"Yer got a mimory twinty miles long," Pete said, by way of discounting Tom's doubts of himself. "I'm thinkin' ye don't go round with the scout boys enough."