Evan paused and peered up at the big man through his round spectacles, a calm, self-sufficient, unemotional little figure of a man. The word little is used in comparison to Deputy Jenney, for the professor was not undersized. “Were you speaking to me?” he asked. “You’re the skunk that wrote that piece about me,” shouted Deputy Jenney. “I certainly wrote an article in which you were mentioned,” said Evan, who, apparently, had not the least idea he stood in imminent danger of destruction. “I’ll teach ye, confound ye!... I’ll show ye how to git free with folkses’ names.” Here the deputy applied with generous tongue a number of descriptive epithets. “When I git through with you,” he continued, “you won’t waggle a pen for a day or two.” And then, quite without warning the professor to make ready for battle, the deputy swung his great arm, with an enormous open hand flailing at its extremity, and slapped Evan just under his left ear. Evan left the place on which he had been standing suddenly and completely, bringing up in the road a dozen feet away dazed, astounded, feeling as if something had fallen upon him from a great height. It was his first experience with physical violence. Never before had a man struck him. His sensations were conflicting--when his head cleared sufficiently to enable him to perceive sensations. He had been struck and knocked down! He, Evan Bartholomew Pell, whose life was organized on a plane high above street brawls, had been slapped on the jaw publicly, had been tumbled head over heels ignominiously! He sat up dizzily and raised his hand to his eyes as if to assure himself his spectacles were in place. They were not. He stared up at Deputy Jenney with vague bewilderment, and Deputy Jenney laughed at him. Then Evan lost track of events temporarily. Something went wrong with his highly trained reasoning faculties; in short, these faculties ceased to function. He sprang to his feet, wholly forgetful of his spectacles, and leaped upon Deputy Jenney, uttering a cry of rage. Now Evan had not the least idea what was needful to be done by a man who went into battle; he lost sight of the fact that a man of his stature could not reasonably expect to make satisfactory progress in tearing apart a man of Jenney’s proportions. Of one thing alone he was conscious, and that was a desire to strew the deputy about the road in fragments. Some one who saw the fracas described it later, and his phrase is worth retaining. “The professor,” said this historian, “jest kind of b’iled up over Jenney.”