going young autocrat into an enemy
pitiless and terrible.

Let some brute stone a kitten; torment a boy smaller than himself;
snatch an apple from the stall of the old woman at the corner and, with
a justice whose speed was incredible, Hal Harding descended upon the
miscreant and pommeled into him a lesson in squareness that he did not
soon if forget.

The fact that the youthful avenger was usually on the right side
increased, if anything, the number of street brawls he was mixed up in,
for alas, Mulberry Court and all the outlying vicinity teemed with so
great a multitude of injustices that he who set himself to straighten
them out found ample provocation for continual blows. As he trod the
narrow streets and alleys this champion of the weak encountered one
challenge after another with the result that it was a common sight in
the neighborhood to see Hal Harling the center of an angry scuffle.

Partisanship was instant. A passer-by did not need to investigate the
broil. Ten cases out of eleven the victim of the squabble was getting
what was coming to him, in popular opinion.

"Hal Harling was giving it to him good and plenty," a sympathetic
observer would afterward relate. "I don't know what the fuss was about
but I didn't interfere for I'll wager Hal was right; he usually is."

Around the standard of such a personality it was inevitable that the
inhabitants of the community, especially the male ones, should rally;
and foremost in the ranks of admiring worshippers were Jack Sullivan
and Carl McGregor, either one of whom would willingly have rolled up
his own sleeves in defense of his idol. They tagged at his heels, ran
his errands, and walked on air whenever they won his commendation. If
he called them down it was as if they had been rolled in the dust.

And yet despite the incense burned at his shrine Hal Harling kept a
level head and an estimate of himself that was appealingly modest. In
fact he was a very human boy with the same love of pranks and mischief
that delighted other boys. He loved a joke dearly. It was fun, for
example, to let an orange down on a string and dangle it before little
Katie Callahan's window and then jerk it back out of Katie's reach when
she snatched for it. Or it amused him to drop peppermint balls through
the Murphy's letter box and hear the children inside the room chase
them as they rolled about the floor. Later he saw to it that Katie got
the orange and the Murphy youngsters the ca