“Don’t you throw that at me,” said Sam seriously.  Yan sent it with his deadliest force and aim.  Sam dodged it and then in self-defense ran at Yan and they grappled and fought, while Guy, eager for revenge, rushed to help Sam, and got in a few trifling blows.

Sam was heavier and stronger than Yan, but Yan had gained wonderfully since coming to Sanger.  He was thin, but wiry, and at school he had learned the familiar hip-throw that is as old as Cain and Abel.  It was all he did know of wrestling, but now it stood him in good stead.  He was strong with rage, too—­and almost as soon as they grappled he found his chance.  Sam’s heels flew up and he went sprawling in the dust.  One straight blow on the nose sent Guy off howling, and seeing Sam once more on his feet, Yan rushed at him again like a wild beast.  A moment later the big boy went tumbling over the bank into the pond.

“You see if I don’t get you sent about your business from here,” spluttered Sam, now thoroughly angry.  “I’ll tell Da you hender the wurruk.”  His eyes were full of water and Guy’s were full of stars and of tears.  Neither saw the fourth party near; but Yan did.  There, not twenty yards away, stood William Raften, spectator of the whole affair—­an expression not of anger but of infinite sorrow and disappointment on his face—­not because they had quarrelled—­no—­he knew boy nature well enough not to give that a thought—­but that his son, older and stronger than the other and backed by another boy, should be licked in fair fight by a thin, half-invalid.

It was as bitter a pill as he had ever had to swallow.  He turned in silence and disappeared, and never afterward alluded to the matter.

[Illustration:  “There stood Raften, spectator of the whole affair.”]

XV

The Peace of Minnie

That night the two avoided each other.  Yan ate but little, and to Mrs. Raften’s kindly solicitous questions he said he was not feeling well.

After supper they were sitting around the table, the men sleepily silent, Yan and Sam moodily so.  Yan had it all laid out in his mind now.  Sam would make a one-sided report of the affair; Guy would sustain him.  Raften himself was witness of Yan’s violence.

The merry days at Sanger were over.  He was doomed, and felt like a condemned felon awaiting the carrying out of the sentence.  There was only one lively member of the group.  That was little Minnie.  She was barely three, but a great chatterbox.  Like all children, she dearly loved a “secret,” and one of her favourite tricks was to beckon to some one, laying her pinky finger on her pinker lips, and then when they stooped she would whisper in their ear, “Don’t tell.”  That was all.  It was her Idea of a “seek-it.”

She was playing at her brother’s knee.  He picked her up and they whispered to each other, then she scrambled down and went to Yan.  He lifted her with a tenderness that was born of the thought that she alone loved him now.  She beckoned his head down, put her chubby arms around his neck and whispered, “Don’t tell,” then slid down, holding her dear innocent little finger warningly before her mouth.