“I hope Felix will beat,” said the Story Girl to me, “not only for the family honour, but because that was a mean, mean prayer of Peter’s.  Do you think he will?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed dubiously.  “Felix is too fat.  He’ll get out of breath in no time.  And Peter is such a cool customer, and he’s a year older than Felix.  But then Felix has had some practice.  He has fought boys in Toronto.  And this is Peter’s first fight.”

“Did you ever fight?” asked the Story Girl.

“Once,” I said briefly, dreading the next question, which promptly came.

“Who beat?”

It is sometimes a bitter thing to tell the truth, especially to a young lady for whom you have a great admiration.  I had a struggle with temptation in which I frankly confess I might have been worsted had it not been for a saving and timely remembrance of a certain resolution made on the day preceding Judgment Sunday.

“The other fellow,” I said with reluctant honesty.

“Well,” said the Story Girl, “I think it doesn’t matter whether you get whipped or not so long as you fight a good, square fight.”

Her potent voice made me feel that I was quite a hero after all, and the sting went out of my recollection of that old fight.

When we arrived behind the granary the others were all there.  Cecily was very pale, and Felix and Peter were taking off their coats.  There was a pure yellow sunset that evening, and the aisles of the fir wood were flooded with its radiance.  A cool, autumnal wind was whistling among the dark boughs and scattering blood red leaves from the maple at the end of the granary.

“Now,” said Dan, “I’ll count, and when I say three you pitch in, and hammer each other until one of you has had enough.  Cecily, keep quiet.  Now, one—­two—­three!”

Peter and Felix “pitched in,” with more zeal than discretion on both sides.  As a result, Peter got what later developed into a black eye, and Felix’s nose began to bleed.  Cecily gave a shriek and ran out of the wood.  We thought she had fled because she could not endure the sight of blood, and we were not sorry, for her manifest disapproval and anxiety were damping the excitement of the occasion.

Felix and Peter drew apart after that first onset, and circled about one another warily.  Then, just as they had come to grips again, Uncle Alec walked around the corner of the granary, with Cecily behind him.

He was not angry.  There was a quizzical look in his eyes.  But he took the combatants by their shirt collars and dragged them apart.

“This stops right here, boys,” he said.  “You know I don’t allow fighting.”

“Oh, but Uncle Alec, it was this way,” began Felix eagerly.  “Peter—­”

“No, I don’t want to hear about it,” said Uncle Alec sternly.  “I don’t care what you were fighting about, but you must settle your quarrels in a different fashion.  Remember my commands, Felix.  Peter, Roger is looking for you to wash his buggy.  Be off.”