“I’ll pay for your chicken, I say.  Now you keep away from me!”

[Illustration:  “I’ll pay for your chicken, I say.  Now you keep away from me.”]

The grocer hesitated, dismayed for a second by the threatening weights in the boy’s hand.  But pride urged the man on.  He stepped up quickly, and planted a smarting blow on Jimmy’s leg.  It was well for the grocer that he ducked his head; for when the paddle struck, the boy did not flinch, but let drive one weight after another, and cried before each crash of glass that the flying irons made inside the store, “Yes, you will!” and again, “Yes, you will!”

He forgot the ache in his cramped heel and the burning in his bruised toe as he ran to the middle of the street.

“You old coward, why don’t you pick on some one your size?”

The tears were rising to his eyes; he had to run to escape from the tide.  Just as he turned, he caught a glimpse of his father joining the gathering crowd.  After that his feet grew wings.

A freight train stood on the track in front of the boy, a quarter of a mile away.  A mad impulse came to him as he ran, and he yielded to it.  A boy with a grievance, or a boy with a sore toe, or a boy with fear at his back, cannot fashion his conduct after the beautiful principles laid down in Mr. Herbert Spencer’s “Data of Ethics.”  So when Jimmy Sears came to the freight train that blocked his flight, he darted down the track until he was out of sight of any possible pursuers in the street.  He clambered breathlessly into a coal car, and snuggled down into a corner inside a little strip of shade, and panted like a hunted rabbit.  A sickening pain throbbed up from his toe.  The train moved slowly at first, and Jimmy knew that he could not hide from the train men in a coal car.  On a banter from Piggy Pennington and Bud Perkins Jimmy had ridden on the brake-beam while the switch engine was pulling freight cars about the railroad yards.  He had a vague idea that midway of the train, between two box cars, would be a safe place.  When the train began to increase its speed, Jimmy climbed up the side of a cattle car and ran along the roof.  He had gone three car-lengths and was about to make his third jump, when he saw the angry face of his father, who appeared on the depot platform.  Instinctively the boy darted to the other side of the car-roof.  His jump fell short.  The father saw his son’s head go down, and for an awful minute Henry Sears heard the lumbering train rumble by.  In the first second of that minute, the frantic man listened for a scream.  He heard none.  Then slowly he sank upon a baggage truck.  He was helpless.  A paralysis of horror was upon him.  Car after car jolted along.  At last the yellow caboose flashed by him.  Half of the longest second Henry Sears ever knew passed before he dared turn his eyes toward the place on the track where his son went down.  Then he looked, and saw only the cinder track and