with a hitch and a kick, loping along, while his
delicately-balanced imagination, now soaring above the gloomy descents
of the morning, swam joyfully in the realms of future triumphs.

In this abstracted mood he passed Foundation's gloomy portals and
Laloo standing in his door gazing down the road, and took the leafy
path that led to the Green.

All at once he heard a battle cry and, turning, beheld the
Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary spring from their
concealment and bear down upon him with unmistakable intent. Now,
whether in a former existence Dink had been parent to the fox, or
whether the purely human instinct was quicker than the reason, before
he knew what he had done he had bounded forward and burst for home in
full flight, with his heart pumping at his ribs. Easily distancing his
pursuers, he arrived at the Green House before it dawned upon him that
he had been challenged and run away.

He stopped abruptly with clenched fists, breathing deep.

"Now let them come," he said, turning.

But the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary, having
abandoned the hopeless chase, had gone another way.

Angry and ashamed, Dink went to his room, vowing terrific vengeance.
He planted himself before the mirror and, doubling up either arm, felt
the well-hardened muscles.

"There were two of them, and I didn't have time to think," he said.
"I'll fight 'em--any of 'em."

Reassured by the scowling ferocity of his reflected countenance, he
turned away. But, passing near the window, he saw the Coffee-colored
Angel and the White Mountain Canary come militantly up the stone walk.
A moment later their steps sounded on the stairs. He went hastily to
the door and shot the key. An instant later the door was tried, and
then the contemptuous face of the Coffee-colored Angel loomed through
the transom.

"I knew you were yellow the moment I looked at you," he said
scornfully. "Pah!"

Dink did not answer. He was all in a whirl. His action in locking the
door, so contrary to his heroic resolutions, left him in confusion.

"I wonder if I really am afraid," he said, sitting down-all in a heap.
The look in the Coffee-colored Angel's eye had brought him an
unpleasant creeping sensation in the region of the back.

And yet the Coffee-colored Angel, bone for bone and inch for inch, was
just what he was--only he had fled from him, inadvertently,
instinctively, it is true, yet feeling the running menace at his