the biggest kind of an expert job and that you fellows are blamed
doubtful about it. Then, when you get your set working and let Unk
listen in, he'll pay up and we'll divide the money. See? Easy as pie. Or
we might work it another way: I'll make the bet with him and you fellows
let on to fall down. Or we might--"

"Well, I've listened to your schemes," said Bill, "and I'm going to say
this about them: I think you are the dirtiest, meanest skunk I ever ran
across. You--"

"Say, now, what's the matter?"

"You're a guest under your uncle's roof; eating his grub, accepting his
hospitality, pretending to be his friend--"

"Aw, cut that out, now! You needn't let on you're so awful fine."

"And then deliberately trying to hatch a scheme to rob him! Of all the
rotten, contemptible--" Unable to voice his righteous indignation, Bill
clenched his fist and struck Thad square in the eye.

Thad had risen and was standing in front of Bill, trembling with rage as
impotent as though _he_ were little and lame, leaning, like Bill, on the
crutch a less valiant cripple would have used instead of his bare fist.

With a look of fiendish hatred, instead of returning blow for blow, Thad
made a sudden grab and tore Bill's crutch out of the hand which had felt
no impulse to use it in defense against his able-bodied antagonist.

"Now, you blow to Uncle and I'll break this crutch!"

Strange, isn't it, how we often are reminded of funny things even in the
midst of danger? Bill, a cripple and unable to move about with the
agility needed to fend off a cowardly attack by this miserable piker,
showed the stuff he was made of when he burst out laughing, for he was
reminded by this threat of that old yarn about a softy's threatening to
break the umbrella of his rival found in the vestibule of his girl's
house, then going out and praying for rain!

Thad, astonished at Bill's sudden mirth, held the crutch mid-air, and
demanded with a malignant leer:

"Huh! Laugh, will you?"

"Go ahead and break it, but it won't be a circumstance to what I'll do
to you. I can imagine your uncle--"

"So? Listen, you pusillanimous, knock-kneed shrimp? I'm going to mash
your jaw so you'll never wag it again! And right now, too, you--"

Possibly there was as much determination back of this as any evil
intent, but it also was doomed to failure. There was a quick step from
the deeper shadows and a figure loomed suddenly in front of Thad who,
with uplifted crutch, w