“I’m going to torture you, Funky.  Every day you must come to me and beg me to do it.  If you don’t come and pray for it I’ll come to you and you’ll get it double and treble.  If you sneak you’ll get it quadru—­er—­quadrupedal—­and also be known as Sneaky as well as Funky.  See?” he continued.

“How will you torture me, Harberth, please?” asked Dam meekly, as he measured the other with his eye, noted his puffiness, short reach, and inward tendency of knee.

“Oh! lots of ways,” was the reply.  “Dry shaves, tweaks, scalpers, twisters, choko, tappers, digs, benders, shinners, windos, all sorts.”

“I don’t even know what they are,” moaned Dam.

“Poor Kid!” sympathized the bully, “you soon will, though.  Dry shaves are beautiful.  You die dotty in about five minutes if I don’t see fit to stop.  Twisters break your wrists and you yell the roof off—­or would do if I didn’t gag you first with a cake of soap and a towel.  Tappers are very amusing, too, for me that is—­not for you.  They are done on the side of your knee with a cricket stump.  Wonderful how kids howl when you understand knee-treatment.  Choko is good too.  Makes you black in the face and your eyes goggle out awful funny.  Done with a silk handkerchief and a stick.  Windos and benders go together and really want two fellows to do it properly.  I hit you in the wind and you double up, and the other fellow un-doubles you from behind—­with a cane—­so that I can double you up again.  Laugh!  I nearly died over young Berners.  Shinners, scalpers, and tweaks are good too—­jolly good!... but of course all this comes after lamming and tunding....  Come along with me....”

“Nit,” was Dam’s firm but gentle reply, and a little pulse began to beat beneath his cheek bone.

“Oh!  Ho!” smiled Master Harberth, “then I’ll begin here, and when you’re broke and blubbing you’ll come with me—­and get just double for a start.”

Dam’s spirits rose and he felt almost happy—­certainly far better than he had done since the hapless encounter with the bottled adder and his fall from grace.  It was a positive, joy to have an enemy he could tackle, a real flesh-and-blood foe and tormentor that came upon him in broad daylight and in mere human form.

After countless thousands of centuries of awful nightmare struggling—­in which he was bound hand-and-foot and doomed to failure and torture from the outset, the sport, plaything, and victim of a fearful, intangible Horror—­this would be sheer amusement and recreation.  What could mere man do to him, much less mere boy!  Why, the most awful torture-chamber of the Holy Inquisition of old was a pleasant recreation-room compared with any place where the Snake could enter.

Oh, if the Snake could only be met and fought in the open with free hands and untrammelled limbs, as Bully Harberth could!

Oh, if it could only inflict mere physical pain instead of such agonies of terror as made the idea of any bodily injury—­mere cutting, burning, beating, blinding—­a trifling nothing-at-all.  Anyhow, he could imagine that Bully Harberth was the Snake or Its emissary and, since he was indirectly brought upon him by the Snake, regard him as a myrmidon—­and deal with him accordingly....