oy!" taunted Dick. "And he had
to drag the boy away off here, so that there wouldn't be a chance of
another boy coming along. A man of your caliber, Dexter, may be brave
enough to face one boy, when he's angry enough, but you wouldn't dare
say 'boo' if one of my boy friends were here to back me up."

"I'll stop that sort of impudence right now," growled Dexter, stung more
deeply by the taunts than he would have been willing to let the boy
guess. "I'm pretty savage in my mind against you, at any rate, and I may
as well let some of it out!"

Whack! smack! thump! Dexter began savagely to vent all of his bottled-up
spite against young Prescott, striking him repeatedly, and with such
force that the lad was soon aching all over.

Dick fought back as best he could, but, pinned down as he was, and in
the grip of one three times as strong as himself, Dick could get in an
effective blow only now and then. Such blows as he did land only served
to fan Dexter's wrath to greater fury--and the boy suffered accordingly.

It would have been a brutal beating, under any circumstances, that Dick
received. In his helpless condition it was doubly brutal.

"Now, do you think you've got enough to hold you for a while?" Ab.
Dexter demanded, as he paused, panting.

"I'm just thinking about the time when you'll get it all back with
interest!" snapped young Prescott.

"Oh, then you haven't had enough--_yet_?"

"I had enough before you began."

"But you haven't learned to keep a civil tongue in your head?"

"Dexter," retorted the lad, speaking more earnestly than he was aware,
"I try to keep not only a civil tongue, but a pleasant manner for every
human being who tries to act decently. With you it's different. Before
to-day I didn't know much about you. What little I did know wasn't to
your credit. But now I know you to belong to nothing better than the
scum of the earth. No human being with any self-respect could be decent
with you!"

"You're getting worse than ever, are you?" sneered Dexter. "I see that
my work is only half started."

With that Ab. Dexter threw himself upon the boy again, giving him an
even more lively beating than before.

Dick Prescott, panting with his struggles, disdained to cry out, but
saved all his strength to fight back.

At last, all but exhausted, Ab. Dexter paused.

"You got a little better lesson that time," boasted the wretch.

"And I got a small lunch while you were taking your dinner," retorted