Ned Strong.
"Yes, you know it is. You pulled down that wall yourself and then to escape getting in trouble with your father you blamed us for it," snapped Herc.
The bully's face twitched. He grew pale with anger and his rage was none the less because he knew Herc's charges to be true.
"Call me a liar, will you?" he gritted out, springing at Ned with considerable agility, considering his hulking frame and general appearance of clumsy strength.
"Take that!"
Smack!
The bully's big hand landed fair on Ned's cheek, bruising it and raising an angry crimson mark.
Unwilling as Ned was to fight in such a place, the insult was too maddening to be allowed to go unnoticed by any one but an arrant coward; and Ned was far from being that.
Before Hank had gathered himself together from the force of his unexpected blow, the quiet Ned was transformed from his usual docile self, into a formidable antagonist. His eyes blazed with anger as he crouched into a boxing posture for a breath, and then lunged full at Hank Harkins, who met the lighter lad's onslaught with a defiant sneer.
So quickly had it all happened that no one had had time to say a word, much less to interfere. Paul Stevens, the owner of the store, was out in the granary at the back helping a farmer get a load of oats onto his wagon.
The loungers, nothing averse to having the monotony of their unceasing discussions of the crops and politics interrupted in such dramatic fashion, fell back to give the battlers room. Not one of them, however, dreamed of but one issue to the battle and that was that Ned Strong was in for a terrible thrashing; but, as the seconds slipped by, and several blows had been exchanged between the two, it began to appear that Ned was not going to prove such an easy prey as had at first seemed manifest.
Hank Harkins himself, who had been surprised at any resistance from Herc's cousin, began to look uneasy as Ned, instead of going down before the perfect hail of blows the bully delivered, skillfully avoided most of the lunges and contented himself with ducking and dodging; only changing his tactics now and then to deliver a blow when he saw a favorable opportunity.
"Good boy, Ned," breathed Herc, as he saw his companion wading into Hank Harkins in such surprising style.
Even the loyal Herc had not hitherto dreamed that beneath Ned's quiet personality had been hidden such ability to take care of himself.
Hank, after the first few minutes, was breathing heavily, and the sweat began to pour off his face. A pampered, only son, he never did much hard work about the farm, whereas Ned's muscles were trained fine as nickel-steel by hay-pitching, wood-sawing and other strenuous tasks. His training stood him in good stead now.
Overmatched by Hank, he undoubtedly was, but his hard frame was the more enduring. Hank's punches, terrific enough at first, began gradually to grow weaker, more particularly as most of them had been wasted on empty space.
Finally Hank, perceiving that he was reaching the end of his rope, clenched his teeth and, with set face and narrowed eyes, made up his mind to end the fight in one supreme effort.
He hurled himself on his lighter antagonist like a thunderbolt, but Ned, with a skillful duck, avoided the full fury of the onslaught, and rising just as the bully launched his blows into thin air, caught his lumbering opponent full under the chin.
Swinging his arms, like a scarecrow in a windstorm, the bully plunged backward under the effective blow.
"Hurray for Ned Strong!" shouted Herc ecstatically, as the bully's big frame reeled staggeringly backward.
The next minute, however, his delight changed to a groan of dismay as Hank, unable to control himself, crashed, full tilt, into the stove. With a deafening clatter, like that of a mad bull careening round a tinware shop, the heater and its long pipe, came toppling in a sooty confusion to the ground. Red-hot coals shot out in every direction.
In the midst of the wreckage sprawled the unlucky bully, his features bedaubed with black. Through this mask his look of puzzled rage at his defeat came so comically that Ned and Herc could not restrain themselves, but, even in the face of the disaster to the store stove, burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. In the meantime some one hurled a bucket of water on the coals, and the bully was drenched.
The onlookers, their risibilities also tickled by the downfall of the bully, and the noisy demolition of the stove, joined in the merriment and the laden shelves of the store were echoing to a perfect tempest of laughter when suddenly the rear door opened and Paul Stevens entered. A look of dismay appeared on his lean features as his eyes lighted on the wreckage.
With him was another figure whose unexpected appearance caused the boys' faces to assume almost as dismayed a look as the countenance of the storekeeper.
"Grandfather!" gasped Ned, as his eyes encountered the angry glare of the newcomer's pale orbs.
"Yes, – grandfather," snapped the other, whose weather-beaten face was adorned with a tuft of gray hair on the chin, in the style popularly known as "the goatee."
"What have you got to say in explanation of this?"
As he rasped out this query in a harsh, rusty voice like the creaking of a long disused hinge, old Zack Strong pointed to the wreckage. From the midst of it was rising the bully, plentifully besmeared with soot, but doing his best to maintain a look of injured innocence.
CHAPTER II.
"WE'RE GOING TO JOIN THE NAVY."
Old Zack Strong was not one of those men who can distinguish between boyish high spirits and what he would have termed "downright pesky cussedness." In this latter quality, indeed, he believed both his grandsons – Ned, and his dead second son's offspring, Herc, – to be plentifully endowed. Not naturally bad-hearted, however, the old man had assumed the care of the cousins on the death of their parents, but even with his act of adoption there came the thought to his frugal mind: "They'll be a great help 'round the farm."
In his hopes in this direction the old man had not been disappointed. Both boys had entered into the work with painstaking thoroughness; but it must be admitted that to adventurous lads, the monotonous grind of a remote farm in the hills is somewhat dampening. Ever since Ned and Herc had left the district school and become, in a more thorough sense than ever, "helps" to their grandfather, the old man had chafed at their hunting expeditions and proclivities toward baseball and other games. He could not see that pitching hay, milking, and doing chores, was not the full-rounded end of existence for any lads.
So, when, on this bitter December afternoon, he entered the store unexpectedly on his way back from delivering a wagon-load of grist at the water-driven mill at Westerlo, a nearby village, his chagrin may be imagined when he discovered his two young charges occupying the centre of the scene depicted in the last chapter.
In Zack Strong's hard creed there was only one sin worse than playing – or "fooling," as he called it – and that was fighting.
And it was only too evident that in the latter of these heinous offences one at least of the boys had been indulging.
Worse still, in the wrecked stove the old farmer foresaw a demand for damages on the storekeeper's part, and there was only one thing harder to wring from Zack than a smile, and that article was money. If the average farmer is what may be described as "close-fisted," old Zack was "cement-fisted."
With this side-light on
