"Hoh--what's that! I want to see 'em," Joel ran on discontentedly.

"O dear me! Mr. Tisbett wouldn't care if we just stepped in up to that post."

"Yes, he would," cried Davie, in alarm lest Joel should really step over.

"Let me alone," cried Joel, crossly. "O dear me! I can't see a bit of 'em." And in a minute, without stopping to think, he hopped over the door-sill and jumped into the barn.

Little David stood still in terror.

"Come here, Dave," called Joel, in glee, being careful not to go beyond the big post, "you can see 'em just as good's can be.

Bill's got his mouth full of hay, an' he's bobbing his head, and the wisps are tickling Jerry, an' he don't like it," and Joel laughed heartily.

Suddenly somebody slapped David on the back, precipitating him over the sill, and "Jim" ran in past him. "h.e.l.loa. What are you doin'?" he asked Joel.

Joel looked at him, but didn't answer.

"I live here," said Jim, "over in Strawberry Hill. An' Mrs.

Green's my a'nt; and I've just come home from my grandmother's."

Joel said nothing as to this family history, but continued to gaze at the horses. David picked himself up from the barn floor, and hurrying out over the sill, began to dust his clothes, glad that Joel had not seen him tumble in.

"I knocked him over," snickered Jim. "Hee-hee! Cry-baby!" and he pointed to little David, whose face was quite red as he tried to brush his best clothes clean again.

"I'm not crying," said Davie, indignantly, and raising his hot face.

"You knocked him over!" cried Joel, boiling with wrath, and, deserting the big post, he squared off toward the Strawberry Hill boy, and doubled up his little brown fists. "Then you've got to fight me."

"All right," said Jim, glad he was so much bigger. "I know a place down in th' cow-pasture where I can lick you's easy's not."

"You ain't a-goin' to lick me," cried Joel, st.u.r.dily, "I'm goin'

to lick you," while little David, sick with terror, screamed out that he wasn't hurt; that he didn't care if Jim did push him over, and for Joel to come back--come back! But Joel and Jim were already halfway to the cow-pasture, and Davie, wild with fright, stumbled over across the barnyard, and off to the house to find Mr. Tisbett.

"He's just gone into th' house," said one of the farmers who always took this hour, on the occasion of the stage-driver's weekly visit, to come to the tavern porch and get the news.

"He'll be out in a minute or two. Sit down, sonny; you're dreadful hot."

But David wrung his hands, and rushed into the tavern. The dining room was dark and cool, all the dinner things being carried out, except the pickle dish and the sugar bowl; and the crumbs swept off from the table, and the green blinds pulled to.

He could hear the rattle of the dish-washing and the clearing-up generally out in the kitchen, and he plunged in. "Where--where's Mr. Tisbett?" he cried, his breath most gone, from fright, and his little face aflame.

"Goodness me, how you scart me!" exclaimed the tavern-keeper's wife, who, with another woman, was flying around to get the work done up. "Oh, it's one of the Pepper boys. What's the matter, dear?" with a glance at David's hot face. "What you ben a-runnin' so for?"

"Joel." It was all David could say, as he pointed off where he thought the cow-pasture was. "Somethin's happened to that other boy. Didn't you say his name was--Joel?" said the other woman, fastening very small but sharp eyes on David.

"Mercy me! you don't think it!" exclaimed the tavern-keeper's wife, her ruddy face taking a scared expression. "Dear me! I must call Mr. Tisbett. Mr. Tisbett!" she screamed, running, if the speed she now exercised could be called by that name, for it was more like waddling, out to the porch.

"He isn't there," gasped David, following her. "Oh, dear Mrs.

Green, please hurry and find him," he implored.

"I don't know no more'n the dead where he is, child," said Mrs.

Green, turning a perplexed face to David, after the old farmer had said the same thing over again. "Mr. Tisbett's got the run o' the place, an' likely as not, he's stepped to one o' the neighbors," pointing to a small cl.u.s.ter of houses a quarter of a mile away.

Little David groaned and clasped his small hands in distress.

"Then nothing can stop their fighting?" he exclaimed in despair.

"Fighting? Who's fighting?" demanded Mrs. Green, sharply.

"Joel and Jim," said David, glad to think he'd remembered what Mr. Tisbett called the boy, yet sorry, as it flashed over him, that the tavern-keeper's wife was his "a'nt."

"He pushed me down," and his face turned more scarlet yet.

But it was necessary to tell the dreadful thing, else Mrs.

Green would think Joel was to blame in beginning the fight.

But the tavern-keeper's wife had her own reasons for believing differently. And without wasting her breath on words, except to ask David, "Where?" she flung her dish-towel, which she had been carrying in her hand, across her arm, and picking up her skirts, she made remarkably good time across the barnyard by a shorter cut, which she was familiar with, to the cow-pasture.

Jim saw her coming first, and much as he disliked on ordinary occasions to see his "a'nt," he now hailed her approach with secret delight, for the Badgertown boy was giving him all he could do to protect himself. So he now shouted out, "My a'nt's comin'. Stop!"

"I don't care," cried Joel, pommelling away. So Jim struck back as well as he could, longing to hear Mrs. Green scream out, "Stop!" which she did as soon as she had breath enough, and shaking her dish-towel at them. "You wait there, Jim," she commanded, on top of her call, as she came panting on; and Jim, looking all ways for escape, saw there was no use in attempting it. When she did reach him, she seized him and shook him till his head seemed to wobble on his shoulders. Then, with a resounding box on the ear, that seemed like a clap of thunder, she paused to take breath.

"Oh," begged little David, "don't hurt him, dear Mrs. Green."

"Why did you stop us?" glowered Joel, wrathfully, turning his b.l.o.o.d.y little nose up in scorn. "I could 'a' done that to him's easy as not, if you'd let me."

Mrs. Green stamped her ample shoe on the ground. "You start for home," she said to Jim, "an' tell your Pa if he lets you show your face over here for a long spell, he'll settle with me."

Jim took one dive across the cow-pasture, scaled the fence, and disappeared.

"Now you come along of me," said Mrs. Green. "Goodness land alive! I'm all shook to pieces," and she started for the tavern.

"I'll wash your face," to Joel; "then I guess you ain't hurt much," yet she regarded him anxiously.

"I ain't hurt a bit," declared Joel, stoutly, and wiping off the blood with the back of one chubby hand. "And I could 'a' licked him's easy as nothin'," he added regretfully.

"I wish I'd let you, before I took him in tow," said the tavern-keeper's wife, hastily, getting over the ground as well as she could.

"Mamsie wouldn't have liked it," cried little Davie, running on unsteady feet by Joel's side, and looking at him sadly. "Oh, no, she wouldn't, dear Mrs. Green."

"I don't s'pose she would now," said Mrs. Green. "Well, Jim's a bad boy, if I am his a'nt. Like enough he'll git a trouncing from his father," she added cheerfully, as some compensation.

"What is a trouncing?" asked Joel, suddenly, as they hurried on.

"The land alive, don't know what a trouncing is!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the tavern-keeper's wife. "It's a whipping, and Jim's father knows how to give it good, I tell you."

Joel stood still. Little David stared in horror in Mrs. Green's face.

"I don't want him to be whipped," said Joel, slowly. It was one thing to fight it out with fists in the cow-pasture, but quite another to go home to be whipped by a father.

"Oh, yes, he will," repeated Mrs. Green, in her cheeriest way, and shaking her head at him. "You needn't fear, Joel, he'll catch it when he gets home."

"But I don't want him to," declared Joel, loudly, not moving.

"He mustn't! Stop his father from whipping him! He shan't." And before Mrs. Green could recover from her astonishment, he plunged her deeper yet, by bursting into tears.