yours!"

The other girl shrugged her shoulders and retorted,--

"It may be, but it is not my fault, it is yours, Sayap. You did it
yesterday when we beat off the boys. You pushed Shyuote against the wall
and he thumped his head here. See, this is the mark where he struck the
clay. You did this, Sayap, not I."

Sayap laughed, and her buxom form shook.

"You are right; I did it, I served the urchin right. It was good, was it
not, Aistshie? How I punished the brat, and how he looked afterward with
his face all one mud-patch!"

"Yes," Aistshie objected, "but I did more. I faced Okoya, despite his
bow and arrows. That was more than you did."

The other girls interrupted the scornful reply which Sayap was on the
point of giving. They crowded around the two with a number of eager
questions.

"What was it?" queried one.

"What happened yesterday?" another.

"Did you have a quarrel with boys," a third; and so on. All pressed
around begging and coaxing them to tell the story of yesterday's
adventure. The heroines themselves looked at each other in
embarrassment. At last Aistshie broke out,--

"You tell it, Sayap."

"Well," began the latter, "it was yesterday afternoon and we were just
putting on the last touches of the coating, when Okoya and little
Shyuote his brother--"

A clod, skilfully hurled, struck her right ear, filling it with sand and
cutting off the thread of her narrative rather abruptly. Sayap wheeled
around to see whence the blow had come. The other girls all laughed, but
she was angry. Her wrath was raised to the highest pitch however, when
she discovered that Shyuote was the aggressor. On a little eminence near
by stood the scamp, dancing, cutting capers, and yelling triumphantly.

"Shyuote is small, but he knows how to throw."

"Fiend," cried Sayap in reply. She picked up a stone, raised it in the
awkward manner in which most girls handle missiles, and running toward
the boy hurled it at him. It fell far short of its mark, of course, and
Shyuote only laughed, danced, and grimaced so much the more. As Sayap
kept advancing and the other girls followed, he threw a second clod,
which struck her squarely in the face, and so sharply that blood flowed
from her nose and mouth. At the same time the rogue shouted at the top
of his voice,--

"Come on! All of you! I am not afraid. You will never catch me!"

And as the majority of his pursuers came on, while two or three remained
behind soothing and conso