The four boys gave a fine imitation of the Laocoon group complicated by an extra figure frantic splutterings and chokings, strange cries and stranger words issued from this tangle; hands dipped lavishly into the inexhaustible reservoir of tar, with more and more picturesque results.  The caldron had been elevated upon bricks and was not perfectly balanced; and under a heavy impact of the struggling group it lurched and went partly over, pouring forth a Stygian tide which formed a deep pool in the gutter.

It was the fate of Master Roderick Bitts, that exclusive and immaculate person, to make his appearance upon the chaotic scene at this juncture.  All in the cool of a white “sailor suit,” he turned aside from the path of duty—­which led straight to the house of a maiden aunt—­and paused to hop with joy upon the sidewalk.  A repeated epithet continuously half panted, half squawked, somewhere in the nest of gladiators, caught his ear, and he took it up excitedly, not knowing why.

“Little gentleman!” shouted Roderick, jumping up and down in childish glee.  “Little gentleman!  Little gentleman!  Lit——­”

A frightful figure tore itself free from the group, encircled this innocent bystander with a black arm, and hurled him headlong.  Full length and flat on his face went Roderick into the Stygian pool.  The frightful figure was Penrod.

Instantly, the pack flung themselves upon him again, and, carrying them with him, he went over upon Roderick, who from that instant was as active a belligerent as any there.

Thus began the Great Tar Fight, the origin of which proved, afterward, so difficult for parents to trace, owing to the opposing accounts of the combatants.  Marjorie said Penrod began it; Penrod said Mitchy-Mitch began it; Sam Williams said Georgie Bassett began it; Georgie and Maurice Levy said Penrod began it; Roderick Bitts, who had not recognized his first assailant, said Sam Williams began it.

Nobody thought of accusing the barber.  But the barber did not begin it; it was the fly on the barber’s nose that began it—­though, of course, something else began the fly.  Somehow, we never manage to hang the real offender.

The end came only with the arrival of Penrod’s mother, who had been having a painful conversation by telephone with Mrs. Jones, the mother of Marjorie, and came forth to seek an errant son.  It is a mystery how she was able to pick out her own, for by the time she got there his voice was too hoarse to be recognizable.  Mr. Schofield’s version of things was that Penrod was insane.  “He’s a stark, raving lunatic!” declared the father, descending to the library from a before-dinner interview with the outlaw, that evening.  “I’d send him to military school, but I don’t believe they’d take him.  Do you know why he says all that awfulness happened?”

“When Margaret and I were trying to scrub him,” responded Mrs. Schofield wearily, “he said ‘everybody’ had been calling him names.”