"They'll take you," Darn informed him, "and you won't have anything to say about it."

"Mother 'Larkey won't let them take me, will she, Danny?" asked Jerry in a voice that was becoming shrill and high from fear.

"No, she won't," a.s.serted Danny. "Darn Darner, you jest let Jerry be.

You ain't got no right to scare a orfum boy like that."

"We won't let them take you," comforted Celia Jane, suddenly affectionate, and put her arm about Jerry's neck.

Darn stepped directly in front of Jerry and stared coolly down at him until Jerry was so uncomfortable that he couldn't raise his eyes from the ground.

"You're goin' to the poor farm Wednesday morning," he said calmly, "because Mrs. Mullarkey's too poor to keep you any longer. She can't make enough to keep her own kids."

Jerry felt suddenly very little and all alone in a big cold world. Fear had entered his heart. He felt that Mrs. Mullarkey not only hadn't been able to make both ends meet but that she was never going to be able to do it. He some way knew that Darn Darner was telling the truth and that soon he would be torn away from the only home he could remember. His lips twisted and he felt the hot tears filling his eyes. Yet he denied Darn's statement with all his soul.

"They won't! They shan't take me! I'll run away first!"

"Much good that would do you," commented Darn unsympathetically. "It'd be easy enough to find you."

"How do you know they're goin' to take Jerry away?" asked Chris.

"He don't know it!" cried Nora. "He's jest tryin' to scare us."

"No, I ain't," denied Darn. "My father's overseer of the poor in this county and I guess I heard him tell mamma last night that he was goin'

to take Jerry to the poor farm Wednesday morning. He said Mrs. Mullarkey had agreed as to how she'd hafta let him take Jerry because her insurance money from Mr. Mullarkey was all gone and she couldn't make enough to support her own kids."

"It ain't so!" bl.u.s.tered Jerry, but all the time terribly frightened. He tried to think of something to say that would show he was not afraid of Darn Darner, who was always picking on little boys.

"You shan't go!" Celia Jane cried, tears running down her cheeks. She flung both arms around Jerry's neck and squeezed him pa.s.sionately.

"What will Kathleen do without Jerry?" asked Nora in a choked voice.

Jerry looked up and saw that she was quietly weeping, too. They believed it! Believed that Mother 'Larkey would let them take him away! He had been somewhat comforted by their stout a.s.sertions that Darn's words were false, but now--!

He was stunned. Then his lips twisted and twitched and the tears that had been forming in his eyes spilled silently over.

"Don't get scared, Jerry," Danny tried to comfort him. Then he turned to the tormentor. "_Darn_ you, Darn, why can't you let him be!"

There it was! Just what Jerry wanted to show Darn he couldn't scare him.

His oozing courage flamed up in a final flare of desperation. Through his tears and the choke in his throat he cried:

"_Darn_ Darn Darner! Darn! Darn! Darn! _Darn_ Darn Darner!"

"That's about enough from you, Jerry Elbow!" shouted Darn. He gave Jerry a resounding slap in the face. "No kid like you can call me that without takin' the biggest lickin' he ever got."

"No, you don't!" cried Danny and quick as a flash he rushed at Darn and began pounding him over the head and shoulders with his fists. Chris and Nora went to Danny's aid and the three pairs of fists caused Darn to duck and run a short distance.

Jerry slumped down into the dust of the road, weeping bitterly, and Celia Jane flopped down by him, hugging him tight and mingling her tears with his.

Danny and Chris and even the usually gentle Nora, but for once with all her gentleness vanished, gave vent to their feelings against Darn by making a chant out of his name.

"_Darn_ Darn Darner! Darn! Darn! Darn! _Darn_ Darn Darner! Darn! Darn!

Darn!"

Into that chant boiled over all their pent-up dislike for him which had been simmering under cover for so long. Darn started back towards them, angry through and through, but stopped as they rushed to meet him, fists doubled up ready for battle. He had fought many boys bigger than himself, but he fled before the numerical strength of the present enemy, flinging back over his shoulder from a safe distance, "Blue-eyed beauty!

Ole Danny dumb-head! Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head! Yah! You'll _hafta_ go to the poor farm if you want to see Jerry Elbow after Wednesday."

Upon hearing Darn's words Jerry stretched out at full length in the road and his voice rose in a quavering wail of anguish. Celia Jane emitted a thinner, shriller wail. Nora came back to comfort them and was caught by the contagion so that she too plumped down in the road and wept.

Danny and Chris, being boys, were ashamed to give vent to their emotions in a similar way and stood looking down at the huddled forms in the road. Chris, after a time, found himself weeping in sympathy and openly rubbed away the tears with his shirt sleeve. Even Danny swallowed hard and dabbed at his eyes.

"Well, I'll be horn-swoggled!" exclaimed a startled, mystified voice back of the children.

Jerry opened his eyes on a blurred picture of Danny and Chris turning suddenly about and of Nora springing to her feet. A man was just getting out of a two-seated buggy. All sound of his approach had been drowned out by the vociferous lamentations of Jerry and Celia Jane, which still continued.

"What's the trouble here?" asked the man in a deep, pleasant voice that carried even through the clamor into Jerry's consciousness. He raised his head and looked up through swollen and tear-drenched eyes at the man.

"They're g-goin' to take Jerry Elbow to the p-p-poor farm Wednesday morning," Danny stutteringly explained.

"Then you must be the Mullarkey children," observed the man, speaking to the group.

"I'm Danny," said Danny, and Chris identified himself.

"Then this must be Jerry Elbow," the man remarked, stooping to pick Jerry up.

Jerry flung his arms about the man's neck and clung there desperately.

"Yes, sir, he's Jerry," Nora explained, as Celia Jane got up out of the road and brushed the dust from her dress.

"My name's Tom Phillips," said their new friend. "I knew your father, Dan Mullarkey, very well. He told me once how he found you by the roadside one stormy night far from any house, Jerry Elbow."

Jerry felt comforted in the strong arms of Mr. Phillips and at the pleasant, deep quality of his voice. He stopped crying except for the long, shuddering sobs that always came at intervals after he had cried so hard.

"Who said anything about taking you to the poor farm?" he asked Jerry.

"D-D-Darn," Jerry sobbed out.

"Darn!" said Mr. Phillips, puzzled. "I say darn, too, but who was it?"

"It was Darn Darner," Danny told him.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Phillips. "That scalawag!"

"He said his father said so," Nora explained.

"That will have to be looked into," Mr. Phillips remarked. "Now you children climb into the buggy and I will take you home. I want to have a talk with your mother."

"She's not to home," said Chris.