rced writer groaned deeply as he scrawled the signature which
pledged him so irretrievably to battle. He felt that his autograph to
such a missive was distinctly inappropriate, and invited sure calamity.
Ham, however, only nodded approval as he commanded, "When you take the
bucket up, lay that on his desk and be sure he gets it."

Yet as Paul plodded on, a piteous little shape of quaking terror, Ham
let the glance of militant tenderness flash once more into his eyes, and
his voice came in sympathetic timbre.

"Paul, I can't always do your fightin' for you. If I could I wouldn't
make _you_ do it--but you've got to learn how to stand on your own legs.
It ain't only the Marquess kid you're fightin'. You've got to lick the
yeller streak out of yourself before it ruins you." He paused, then
magnanimously added, "If you trim him down good and proper, I'll get you
a new violin string in place of the one you busted."

It was a very unmilitary shape that huddled in its seat, watching his
adversary read the ultimatum. As for the heir of the house of Marquess,
he allowed his freckled face for a moment to pucker in blank
astonishment, then a smile of beatitude enveloped it. It was such
beatitude as might appear on the visage of a cat who has unexpectedly
received a challenge to mortal combat from a mouse.

An hour of the afternoon session yet intervened between the present and
the awful future and upon Paul Burton it rested with its incubus of dire
suspense. It was an hour which the Marquess kid employed congenially
across the aisle. Whenever the tired eyes of the teacher were not upon
him he gave elaborate pantomimes wherein he felt the swelling biceps of
his right arm, and made as if to spit belligerently upon his doubled
fist. Sometimes his left hand seemed struggling to restrain the deadly
right, lest it leap forth untimely in its hunger for smiting. These
wordless pleasantries were in no wise lost on the shrinking Paul in
whose slight body slept the spirit of the artist unfortified with
martial iron of combat.

The world of boyhood has little understanding or sympathy for a soul
like Paul's; a soul woven of dreams and harmonies which knows no means
of attuning itself to the material. This lad walked with his head in the
clouds and his thoughts in visions. His playmates were invisible to
human eyes and he heard the crashing of vast symphonies where others
felt only the silences. Now in a little while he was to have his face