s pull
up a plank!"

"Well," said Jack stoutly, "you'd be as scared as I would if he did
holler!"

"You're a small boy, Jack, and easily scared," was the taunting reply.

"Well, pull up a plank, and see what happens. I dare you to!" cried
Jack.

"Here goes then!" said the older boy, and catching hold of a plank that
had rotted at one end, he pulled it up.

"_Oh, let it alone!_" groaned a boy in a farther corner of the room, in
an attempt to imitate an old voice.

"_Oh, let it alone!_" came in exactly the same voice from the loft.

Sidney Cumston, the big boy, who had laughed at little Jack Tiverton,
dropped the plank, and turned pale, while not a boy spoke or moved.

"Come, come!" said Sidney, when he caught his breath, "we're a precious
pack of sillies! Help me lift this big board, will you?"

"Will you?" came from the loft, in the very manner in which he had said
it.

Again he dropped the plank.

"What does it mean?" cried Sidney.

"Mean?" came his last word repeated.

The boys were now thoroughly frightened.

"Come!" cried Sidney, "let's leave here!"

"Here!" came a repetition of his last word, and big as he was, he had
turned to run, when a faint ripple of smothered laughter came down from
the loft.

Immediately Sidney's pale face flushed red. It flashed through his mind
that these younger boys had seen that he was frightened.

He had been laughed at by the owner of the voice that had mocked him,
and the boys would _never_ stop laughing.

Quickly he mounted the steps, and roughly he dragged little Floretta
from her hiding place, half carrying her down the stairway, because it
was too narrow for two to descend.

"So you thought it was funny, just _funny_ to mock us, did you?" he
asked, when they reached the floor.

Floretta was not laughing now.

She was sullen, and at the same time frightened.

What would they do to her?

They crowded around her, frowning and making all sorts of wild
suggestions as to what should be done with her.

"Keep her mocking till she's got enough of it!" cried one.

"Put her back in the loft, and leave her there! She seemed to like
there," said another.

The big boy, whose hand was still on her shoulder, was more angry than
either of the others.

He was a bully, always ready to torment some one smaller than himself.

He had reason to be provoked with Floretta, and the fact that she was
only a little girl, made no impression upon him.

He would as willi