These bold words astonished everybody.
“Why I believe he thinks he can whip the whole crowd,” said Henderson, who was one of the four who were holding fast to Bert’s arms. Bert was a little fellow, like himself, and consequently Dick was not very much afraid of him.
“Come on,” said Don, impatiently. “I am getting cold standing here in my shirt-sleeves. Give me a little exercise to warm me up. Remember I wasn’t born as near the Arctic Circle as you fellows were, and for that reason I can’t stand the cold as well. Hurry up, somebody —anybody who thinks he was insulted by the words I uttered this morning.”
Driven almost to desperation by this challenge, which he knew was addressed to himself, and which seemed to imply that his prospective antagonist placed a very low estimate upon his powers, Duncan pulled off both his coats, assumed a threatening attitude and advanced toward Don, who extended his hand in the most friendly manner. The bully, believing that Don wanted to parley with him, took the proffered hand in his own, and in a second more arose in the air as if an exceedingly strong spring had suddenly uncoiled itself under his feet. When he came down again he measured his full length on the ice, landing in such dangerous proximity to the hole that had been cut for the poor student’s benefit, that his uniform cap fell into it.
Everybody was struck motionless and dumb with amazement. The bully was so bewildered that he did not get upon his feet again immediately, and the poor student forgot to shiver.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEW YORK BOOT-BLACK
“Take your hands off those boys,” said Don, who was in just the right humor to make a scattering among Fisher’s crowd of friends. “Release them both and do it at once, or I will pitch the last one of you into that hole before you can say ‘General Jackson’ with your mouths open. Come over here, Bert.”
He stepped up and took the prisoner by the arm, and his four guards surrendered him without a word of protest. The magical manner in which Don had floored the biggest bully in school, before whom no boy in Bridgeport had ever been able to stand for a minute, either with boxing-gloves or bare fists, and the ease with which he had done it, astounded them. They had never seen anything like it before, and there was something very mysterious in it. Did not this backwoodsman have other equally bewildering tactics at his command which he could bring into play if he were crowded upon? Probably he had, and so the best thing they could do was to let him alone.
“Your name is Sam Arkwright, is it not?” said Don, taking one of the boy’s blue-cold hands in both his own warm ones. “I thought I had heard you answer to that name at roll-call. I am a plebe too, and so we’ll stand together. Put on these gloves and come with me. You will freeze if you stay here any longer. As for you,” he added, waving his hand toward the students to show that he included them all in the remarks he was about to make, “you are a pack of cowards, and I can whip the best man among you right here and now. Pick him out and let me take a look at him.”
“I am good for the best of them if they will come one at a time,” said Sam. “But I give in to a dozen when they all jump on me at once.”
“I will leave that challenge open,” said Don, as he led Sam away. “You know where my room is, and any little notes you may choose to shove under my door will receive prompt attention.”
Tom and his crowd did not speak; they had not yet recovered from their amazement. They stood gazing after the rescued boy and his champion until they disappeared in the darkness, and then they turned and looked at one another.
“I declare, Duncan,” exclaimed Tom Fisher, who was the first to speak. “You’ve met your master at last, have you not?”
The defeated bully growled out something in reply, but his friends could not understand what it was. Like every boy who prides himself upon his strength and skill, he did not like to acknowledge that he had been beaten.
“Did he hurt you?” asked one of the students. “I noticed that you didn’t get up right away.”
“How in the name of all that’s wonderful did he do it?” inquired another. “I didn’t see him clinch or strike you.”
“He did neither,” replied Duncan, “and that’s just what bangs me. I am willing to swear that he did not touch me anywhere except on the hand, and he took hold of that just as though he wanted to give it a friendly shake. It’s a trick of some kind – a boss one, too – and I will give him my next quarter’s spending money if he will teach it to me.”
“Humph!” exclaimed Tom Fisher. “You needn’t expect to him to do that. He doesn’t look to me to be such a fool. You and he may come together in earnest some day – if you don’t, he will be about the only boy you haven’t had a fight with since you have been a student at this academy – and then you will probably find out what his tricks are.”
“He didn’t hurt me at all,” continued Clarence; “but he could if he had been so disposed. If he had used a little more exertion he could have thrown me into that air-hole; and if I had happened to come up under the ice – ugh!” exclaimed Clarence, shivering all over as he looked down into the dark water.
“Is there no way in which we can get even with him?” asked Fisher.
“Is there!” replied Clarence, angrily. “Do you suppose that I am going to submit tamely to an insult like that? We’ll make a way to get even with him. Things have come to a pretty pass if a plebe is going to be allowed to come here and run this school to suit himself.”
The mere reference to such an unheard-of thing was enough to raise the ire of Tom Fisher and all his companions, who with one voice declared that the Planter, having presumed to lay violent hands on an upper-class boy, and to set at defiance one of the old-established customs of the academy, must be made to suffer the consequences. They held a long and earnest consultation there on the ice, and Fisher and Duncan, who were fruitful in expedients, soon hit upon a plan which promised, if skillfully managed, to bring Sam Arkwright’s champion into serious trouble. It was a most dangerous plan, because it was to be carried out under the guise of friendship.
“That’s the only way to do it, fellows, you may depend upon it,” said Duncan, after their scheme had been thoroughly discussed. “We must bring him into trouble with the faculty, and let them do the hazing, for we couldn’t do it if we wanted to. I was nothing but a child in his grasp, and, to tell the honest truth, I have no desire to face him again.”
“I hope we shall succeed,” said Fisher. “But if the Planter turns out to be one of those good little boys who never do anything wrong, then what?”
If Tom had only known it, he need not have bothered his head on this point. Unfortunately for Don, something happened that very night which made it comparatively easy for the conspirators to carry out the plans they had formed regarding him.
Meanwhile Don and Bert were walking briskly toward the academy in company with the rescued boy, who was somewhat protected from the keen wind by Bert’s muffler, which the latter had wrapped about his neck, and by Don’s gloves which he wore upon his hands. He was lost in admiration of his new friend’s prowess, and complimented him in the best language he could command.
“Are you an Irishman, sir?” Sam asked, at length.
“Look here,” answered Don, “my name is Gordon – there’s no ‘sir’ about it. No, I am not an Irishman. I am an American, I am proud to say; but I understand the Irish ‘hand and foot’ well enough to give it to such fellows as that Clarence Duncan. I can throw a man weighing two hundred pounds in that way if he will let me take hold of his hand.”
“It was well done,” said Sam. “I never saw it done better.”
“I learned it of one of my father’s hired men – a discharged Union soldier who came to our plantation penniless and hungry, and asked for work,” said Don. “I always make it a point to pick up any little thing of that kind that