estfallen tones.

"Who said 'slave'?" laughs Gillam triumphantly. "My father saith he is
a runaway rat from the Barbadoes," adds Ben to me.

With the fear of a hunted animal under his shaggy brows, little Jack
tries to read how much is guess.

"I am no slave, Ben Gillam," he flings back at hazard; but his voice is
thin from fright.

"My father saith some planter hath lost ten pound on thee, little
slavie," continues Ben.

"Pah! Ten pound for such a scrub! He's not worth six! Look at the
marks on his arms, Ramsay"--catching the sailor roughly by the wrist.
"He can say what he likes. He knows chains."

Little Jack jerked free and ran along the sands as hard as his bare
feet could carry him. Then I turned to Ben, who had always bullied us
both. Dropping the solemn "thou's" which our elders still used, I let
him have plain "you's."

"You--you--mean coward! I've a mind to knock you into the sea!"

"Grow bigger first, little billycock," taunts Ben.

By the next day I was big enough.

Mistress Hortense Hillary was down on the beach with M. Picot's
blackamoor, who dogged her heels wherever she went; and presently comes
Rebecca Stocking to shovel sand too. Then Ben must show what a big
fellow he is by kicking over the little maid's cart-load.

"Stop that!" commands Jack Battle, springing of a sudden from the beach.

For an instant, Ben was taken aback.

Then the insolence that provokes its own punishment broke forth.

"Go play with your equals, jack-pudding! Jailbirds who ape their
betters are strangled up in Quebec," and he kicked down Rebecca's pile
too.

Rebecca's doll-blue eyes spilled over with tears, but Mistress Hortense
was the high-mettled, high-stepping little dame. She fairly stamped
her wrath, and to Jack's amaze took him by the hand and marched off
with the hauteur of an empress.

Then Ben must call out something about M. Picot, the French doctor, not
being what he ought, and little Hortense having no mother.

"Ben," said I quietly, "come out on the pier." The pier ran to deep
water. At the far end I spoke.

"Not another word against Hortense and Jack! Promise me!"

His back was to the water, mine to the shore. He would have promised
readily enough, I think, if the other monkeys had not followed--Rebecca
with big tear-drops on both cheeks, Hortense quivering with wrath, Jack
flushed, half shy and half shamed to be championed by a girl.

"Come, Ben; 'fore I count three, promise