"It doesn't take one long to find your number, Dexter," observed the boy undauntedly. "Your specialty is frightening women and pounding boys who offend you."

"Well, a lot of you boys hammered me this noon, didn't you!"

"Yes; and I wish I had a couple of the fellows here now," retorted d.i.c.k with spirit. "We'd soon make a coward like you seem small. You'd be on your knees, begging, if I had a couple of my chums here to help me."

"Well, you haven't got 'em, and I'll do all the talking that amounts to anything. d.i.c.k Prescott, you're the worst and freshest boy in Gridley!"

"Such a statement, coming from a fellow like you, amounts to high praise, Dexter," d.i.c.k retorted doughtily.

"None of your impudence, now, d.i.c.k Prescott! I've stood all the insolence from you that I'm going to allow."

"My! How big the man talks to the small boy!" taunted d.i.c.k. "And he had to drag the boy away off here, so that there wouldn't be a chance of another boy coming along. A man of your caliber, Dexter, may be brave enough to face one boy, when he's angry enough, but you wouldn't dare say 'boo' if one of my boy friends were here to back me up."

"I'll stop that sort of impudence right now," growled Dexter, stung more deeply by the taunts than he would have been willing to let the boy guess. "I'm pretty savage in my mind against you, at any rate, and I may as well let some of it out!"

Whack! smack! thump! Dexter began savagely to vent all of his bottled-up spite against young Prescott, striking him repeatedly, and with such force that the lad was soon aching all over.

d.i.c.k fought back as best he could, but, pinned down as he was, and in the grip of one three times as strong as himself, d.i.c.k could get in an effective blow only now and then. Such blows as he did land only served to fan Dexter's wrath to greater fury--and the boy suffered accordingly.

It would have been a brutal beating, under any circ.u.mstances, that d.i.c.k received. In his helpless condition it was doubly brutal.

"Now, do you think you've got enough to hold you for a while?" Ab.

Dexter demanded, as he paused, panting.

"I'm just thinking about the time when you'll get it all back with interest!" snapped young Prescott.

"Oh, then you haven't had enough--_yet_?"

"I had enough before you began."

"But you haven't learned to keep a civil tongue in your head?"

"Dexter," retorted the lad, speaking more earnestly than he was aware, "I try to keep not only a civil tongue, but a pleasant manner for every human being who tries to act decently. With you it's different. Before to-day I didn't know much about you. What little I did know wasn't to your credit. But now I know you to belong to nothing better than the sc.u.m of the earth. No human being with any self-respect could be decent with you!"

"You're getting worse than ever, are you?" sneered Dexter. "I see that my work is only half started."

With that Ab. Dexter threw himself upon the boy again, giving him an even more lively beating than before.

d.i.c.k Prescott, panting with his struggles, disdained to cry out, but saved all his strength to fight back.

At last, all but exhausted, Ab. Dexter paused.

"You got a little better lesson that time," boasted the wretch.

"And I got a small lunch while you were taking your dinner," retorted Prescott, no more daunted than before. "Your nose is bleeding and your lip is cut!"

"Yes, I know it! I'm going to take that out of you presently."

"Are you enjoying yourself, Dexter?" asked the boy tauntingly.

"Yes. And before I get through with you, I'm going to make sure that you'll never interfere in my affairs again."

"Do you mean that you expect I'll stand off the next time that I see you trying to frighten your wife into supporting a lazy loafer in style?"

d.i.c.k asked dryly.

"Hang you! You haven't learned your lesson yet, have you?"

"If you're trying to make me 'respect' you, Dexter, you've acted the wrong way all through to-day. You're ent.i.tled to no more respect than an Indian would show a rattlesnake."

Ab. Dexter's face was ablaze with wrath. He had expected to make this Grammar School boy beg for mercy before things had gone half as far as they had. d.i.c.k Prescott's undaunted pluck bewildered the mean bully.

"I'll make you shut up, boy, before I'm through with you!" he warned the lad.

"There's just one way to do that, Dexter!"

"Eh?"

"You'll have to knock me out."

"I'll do that, then!"

It would be wrong to seek to give the reader an impression that young Prescott was not afraid, and did not mind his two thrashings. He was afraid that Dexter would go to great lengths, yet d.i.c.k would not give the bully satisfaction by admitting any fear.

"What you've got to do, before I get through with you," Dexter announced, "is to beg my pardon and to promise that you'll never again interfere with me."

"You'll wait a long while, then," jeered d.i.c.k, "and you'll get strong man's cramp in both arms!"

"And you've got to do more than promise that much," continued the bully.

"You've got to promise, solemnly, to help me in some plans that I have for the future."

"Oh? Plans against your wife, I suppose."

"Very likely," half admitted Dexter. "Whatever the plans are, you're going to help me in them."

"You're going about in a fine way, Dexter, to get my cheerful help."

"Never mind about the cheerful part of it," snarled the man. "You're going to help me, and I'm going to tame you."

"Gracious! What a fine, large tail our cat is growing," laughed d.i.c.k, though his voice did not ring very mirthfully.

Dexter, still astride his young captive, raised his fist. Prescott did not flinch, and it suddenly struck the fellow that he was going about his business in the wrong way. Dexter had never looked for a young Grammar School boy to be so firm and undaunted.

"Now, don't be a fool, Prescott," he began, trying a new tack.

"You ought to be a fine teacher in the subject of good sense," suggested d.i.c.k mockingly.

"I think I can be."