r all it was only a boyish dispute, and
no serious damage had been done. He called you a bully and a terror, and
said he would make an example of you if it ever happened again. Oh! he
frightened me so."

"The old wretch, to come and talk that way to a lady, and she a widow,
too. What do you suppose father would have done to him if he had been
alive? Nearly every boy there will tell you I refused to fight up to the
time he struck me in the face and called me mean names. Then I
commenced. Perhaps I did hit him a little harder than I should, but I
was stirred up, and meant to teach him to leave me alone after that. I
guess I did it all right," and Dick, boy-like, smiled grimly as, in
imagination he could see the deplorable condition of his antagonist when
Ferd humbly admitted that he had had enough.

"But you see it happened that his father met him on the road while his
face was all covered with blood. It was only because he had been struck
on the nose; but it looked terrible to his father, and angered him. I
hope you will not have any trouble with that ill-natured boy again,
son," she said, earnestly.

"I never want to, mother, nor with any fellow; but there's a limit even
to the patience of Job. Father always taught me never to seek a quarrel;
but at the same time never to run away from one like a coward. I try to
follow his advice, mother."

"Yes, I am sure you do. And your father was a peaceable man; yet I can
remember once or twice when he took off his coat and thrashed a bully
until he howled for mercy. In fact, to tell the truth, that was the way
I first made his acquaintance as a boy, for he came to my assistance
when a big ruffian of an overgrown coward had stopped me on the road and
declared he was going to kiss me. Of course I screamed and your father,
then a lad learning the carpenter trade, jumped from the roof of a
kitchen near by and came to my rescue."

She laughed as the recollection came back to her mind, and once again
she could see the young man she had loved for many years standing up as
her knight; Dick too looked pleased at hearing how the father he
remembered so well had been ready to defend the right.

"I don't think Ferd will say anything about this last little adventure.
You see his father was opposed to his getting that motor-cycle, for he
said it would be just like Ferd to have an accident, and perhaps get his
neck broken. And to tell the truth, a little later on if nothing else
turns up