ou're a bully, an overgrown baby, a 'fraid-cat!
Yes, that's what you are! _I_ may be a Tabby Catt, but I'm _not_ a
'fraid-cat. I may be skinny and scrawny now, but I reckon you will be,
too, when I get through with you, Joe Pomeroy! You're the sneakin'est
sneak that ever lived--except your brother. 'Fraid-cat, sneak, sneak,
sneak, s-n-e-a-k--"

Words failed her. What could she say mean enough to express her contempt
for the howling coward almost twice her size pinned under her knees,
making no attempt to defend himself against the rain of blows falling
wherever the avenging fists could strike?

Suddenly she felt herself snatched from the back of her victim, held
high in the air so her feet did not touch the ground, and shaken to and
fro as a terrier shakes a rat. She twisted and turned and writhed and
squirmed to free herself, thinking this must be the big brother
punishing her for the drubbing she had given hapless Joe, and expecting
any instant to feel the lash of his heavy herder's whip. But no whip
struck her, and with one great tug she broke loose from the hand that
gripped her shoulder, and confronted--not Sneed Pomeroy, the bully, but
a tall, swarthy-faced man with a long beard and snapping black eyes,
very much like her own, had she taken the time to notice it, who held
her transfixed for a moment with his angry gaze. Amazed to find Joe's
rescuer--for such he appeared to her--some one other than the big
brother Sneed, and angered at the vigorous shaking he had given her, the
child found vent for her outraged feelings in a horrible grimace at the
stalwart man in front of her. With an exclamation of anger the stranger
raised his hand as if to strike the girl, but she dodged the blow, and
screamed in disdainful defiance:

"Slap, if you dare, you old gray head,
I'll scratch like a--cat--till you'll wish you were dead."

She hesitated a moment before choosing that word, and as it fell from
her lips, she glanced apprehensively at the blubbering Joe still lying
in the dust, and saw for the first time that this rescuer, whoever he
might be, was evidently unknown to Joe, for the coward's bloody face was
even more scared than when she had been pounding it, and he looked as if
he, too, expected to receive some punishment from the hands of the
mysterious stranger.

"Tabitha Catt!"

She whirled toward the man in frightened silence, and her clenched hands
dropped nerveless at her side. It was her father! What