But Sam speedily recovered himself, and for the next few minutes it was give and take, with the odds rather against Ned, who was lighter of build than the bully, and who was constantly forced back by the latter’s rushes. Sam began to think it was all over.
“Well, Mr. Manners’ Teacher, how about you now?” he sneered tauntingly.
Ned did not reply, but he watched Sam like a cat. He saw that the bully was beginning to wear out under the fast work of the last few minutes. His chest was heaving and his breath came pantingly. He guessed that Sam would have been glad to have called “quits” then and there.
But while Ned might have been willing enough not to fight at the beginning of the battle, his blood was up now, and he was determined to see the thing through. He despised fighting as being ruffianly and unnecessary, but, in a case like the present, he felt that if he allowed Sam Hinkley to walk over him, the latter would make it next to impossible for him to remain in Nestorville.
He avoided another of Sam’s bull-like rushes with an agile step backward. As Sam’s blow missed, Ned could hear him give a loud grunt, a sound that told he was tiring.
“I’m wearing him down,” thought Ned, and watched carefully for an opening that might afford him a chance of terminating the battle.
Sam “rushed” Ned again. This time he, too, appeared to be desirous of ending the fight by a blow that would take all the fight out of his lightly built opponent. But his blow landed on thin air.
Ned’s opportunity had come. His fist shot out like a streak of lightning. It struck Sam under the chin, lifting him off his feet. He toppled and fell backward, landing among the chairs with a crash that sounded like a cook-stove falling downstairs.
“That settles him!” cried some of the crowd of boys that had gathered, and “settle” Sam it did, in more senses than one, for, aroused by the crash of his fall, the bully’s father issued from the hotel and seizing his offspring by the scruff of the neck, angrily bade him get inside.
