Pretty was no boxer, but he was a firm believer in the value of a good stout cane.  Imagine his humiliation, then, when he found, in the first place, that the crook of his stick had caught in his coat-pocket and spoiled one good blow, and, in the second place, that the fine strong slash he meant to deliver overhead like a broad-sword stroke merely landed upon the upraised arm of the Senior, and had its whole force broken.  Pretty then had the bitter misery of seeing his good sword wrenched from his hand and broken across the knee of the Senior, who very magnificently told him that he must never appear on the campus again with a walking-stick.

Pretty was overcome with embarrassment at the outcome of his innocent foppery, and of his short, vain battle, and he was the laughing-stock of the Seniors for a whole day.  But, being of Lakerim mettle and metal, he did not mean to let one defeat mean a final overthrow.  He told the rest of the Lakerimmers that he would carry a cane anyway, and carry it anywhere he pleased, and that the next man who attempted to take it from him would be likely to get “mussed up.”

About this time he found a magazine article that told the proper sort of cane to carry, and the proper way to use it in case of attack; and he proceeded to read and profit.

Now, inasmuch as Sawed-Off was working his way through the Academy, and paying his own expenses, without assistance except from what small earnings he could make himself, it was only natural that he should always be the one who always had a little money to lend to the other fellows, though they had their funds from home.  It was now Pretty who came to him for the advance of cash enough to buy a walking-stick of the following superb description:  a thoroughly even, straight-grained bit of hickory-wood, tapered like a billiard-cue, an inch and a half thick at the butt and three fourths of an inch thick at the point, the butt carrying a knob of silver, and the point heavily ferruled.

Pretty had managed to find such a stick in the small stores of Lakerim.  He bought it with Sawed-Off’s money, and he practised his exercises with it so vigorously and so secretly that when he next appeared upon the campus and carried it, the Senior who had attacked him before, let him go by without any hindrance.  He was fairly stupefied at the impudence of this Lakerimmer whom he thought he had thrashed so soundly.  He did not know that the main characteristic of the Lakerimmer is this:  he does not know when he is whipped, or, if he does know it, he will not stay whipped.

But once he had recovered his senses, the haughty Senior did not lose much time in making another onslaught on Pretty.

When some of his friends were pouring cold water on this Senior’s bruised head a few minutes later, he poured cold water on their scheme to attempt to carry out what he had failed in, for he said: 

“Don’t you ever go up against that Lakerim fellow; his cane works like a Gatling gun.”