“Jerome!” called the teacher.  She was a young woman from another village, mildly and assentingly good, virtue having, like the moon, only its simply illuminated side turned towards her vision.  Weakly blue-eyed and spectacled, hooked up primly in chaste drab woollen and capped with white muslin, though scarcely thirty, she stood among her flock and eyed the fierce combatants with an utter lack of command of the situation.  She was a country minister’s daughter, and had never taught until her father’s death.  This was her first school, and to its turbulent elements she brought only the precisely limited lore of a young woman’s seminary of that day, and the experiences of early piety.

Looking at the struggling boys, she thought vaguely of that hymn of Isaac Watts’s which treats of barking and biting dogs and the desirability of amity and concord between children, as if it could in some way be applied to heal the breach.  She called again fruitlessly in her thin treble, which had been raised in public only in neighborhood prayer-meetings:  “Jerome!  Jerome Edwards!”

“Will you say it again?” demanded Jerome of his prostrate adversary, with a sharp prod of a knee.

After a moment of astonished staring there was a burst of mirth among the pupils, especially the older boys.  ’Lisha was not a special favorite among them—­he was too good-looking, had too much money to spend, and was too much favored by the girls.  In spite of the teacher’s half-pleading commands, they made a rush and formed a ring around the fighters.

“Go it, J’rome!” they shouted.  “Give it to him!  You’re a fighter, you be.  Look at J’rome Edwards lickin’ a feller twice his size.  Hi!  Go it, J’rome!”

“Boys!” called the teacher.  “Boys!”

Some of the smaller girls began to cry and clung to her skirts; the elder girls watched with dilated eyes, or laughed with rustic hardihood for such sights.  Elmira still waited on the outskirts.  Jerome paid no attention to the teacher or the shouting boys.  “Will you say it again?” he kept demanding of ’Lisha, until finally he got a sulky response.

“No, I won’t.  Now lemme up, will ye?”

“Say you’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry.  Lemme up!”

Jerome, without appearing to move, collected himself for a spring.  Suddenly he was off ’Lisha and far to one side, with one complete bound of his whole body, like a cat.

’Lisha got up stiffly, muttering under his breath, and went round to the well to wash off the blood.  He did not attempt to renew the combat, as the other boys had hoped he might.  He preferred to undergo the ignominy of being worsted in fight by a little boy rather than take the risk of being pounced upon again with such preternatural fury.  When he entered school, having washed his face, he was quite pale, and walked with shaking knees.  Rather physical than moral courage had ’Lisha Robinson, and it was his moral courage, after all, which had been tested, as it is in all such unequal combats.