avorite in the faculty
had been cheered. Then the signal-hat was flung into the air, and
the rush at the Tree was made, and the combat' for the flowers that
garlanded its burly waist began.

Jeff's size and shape forbade him to try for the flowers from the
shoulders of others. He was one of a group of jays who set their backs
to the Tree, and fought away all comers except their own; they pulled
down every man not of their sort, and put up a jay, who stripped the
Tree of its flowers and flung them to his fellows below. As he was let
drop to the ground, Jeff snatched a handful of his spoil from him, and
made off with it toward the place where he had seen Bessie Lynde and her
party. But when he reached the place, shouldering and elbowing his way
through the press, she was no longer there. He saw her hat at a distance
through the crowd, where he did not choose to follow, and he stuffed the
flowers into his breast to give to her later. He expected to meet her
somewhere in the evening; if not, he would try to find her at her aunt's
house in town; failing that, he could send her the flowers, and trust
her for some sort of leading acknowledgment.

He went and had a bath and dressed himself freshly, and then he went for
a walk in the still evening air. He was very hot from the battle which
had been fought over him, and which he had shared with all his strength,
and it seemed to him as if he could not get cool. He strolled far out
along Concord Avenue, beyond the expanses and ice-horses of Fresh Pond,
into the country toward Belmont, with his hat off and his head down. He
was very well satisfied, and he was smiling to himself at the ease of
his return to Bessie, and securely speculating upon the outcome of their
renewed understanding.

He heard a vehicle behind him, rapidly driven, and he turned out for
it without looking around. Then suddenly he felt a fiery sting on his
forehead, and then a shower of stings swiftly following each other over
his head and face. He remembered stumbling, when he was a boy, into a
nest of yellow-jackets, that swarmed up around him and pierced him like
sparks of fire at every uncovered point. But he knew at the same time
that it was some one in the vehicle beside him who was lashing him over
the head with a whip. He bowed his head with his eyes shut and lunged
blindly out toward his assailant, hoping to seize him.

But the horse sprang aside, and tore past him down the road. Jeff opened
his eyes,