“Not a bit of it, Hodge. I tell you it is a plot to hurt Frank! He’s a fool if he lets them pull him into it after what I have told him! But, for all of his shrewdness about most things, he is easy sometimes. He wants to think everybody white. He is the kind of fellow who will let a chap walk all over him and then play the friend to that sort of a cur. That’s where he makes his mistake.” Now Hodge was aroused, for Rattleton had touched him on a tender spot. “You are wrong!” cried Bart, flushing. “No man walks all over Frank Merriwell. You never knew a fellow to get the best of Merriwell and hold his advantage. Frank is a fighter, and his worst enemies agree on that point, but he fights fair. He will not take an unfair advantage of his meanest and most sneaking enemies, and, for that very reason, the worst enemies he has respect him.” “Rot!” “There is no rot about it. I know, for I was his enemy once, and I did everything in my power to injure him. I did not hesitate to resort to any sort of expedient, no matter how mean and sneaking. I did some very mean things, but still I could not get the best of Frank Merriwell. Sometimes I thought I had him, but I always found out my mistake. When I got him down I was unable to hold him. It made me furious, for I have a temper of my own and a little pride. I was fierce enough to kill him.” “Well, what does that prove?” impatiently asked Harry. “Wait. I am not through. What I want to tell you is this: The more I tried to hurt Merriwell in a sneaking manner the lower I sunk in my own estimation, for I found that he knew what I had done, and yet he refused to get back at me in the same way, although he had opportunities enough. He would not lower himself to fight me with the same kind of weapons I was using. At first I thought him afraid of me----” “That’s it! that’s it!” cried Rattleton. “That’s just what they think of him when he goes easy with them.” “But I learned better than that after a time,” Hodge went on. “I found out he was not afraid at all. It was not cowardice, but it was courage. He was willing to fight me fairly while I took any mean advantage of him, and still he was not afraid I would get the best of him in the end. He felt himself my match, and I began to feel that he was a better man than I in every way. That was what hurt me most. I did not like to think that the fellow I hated was more honorable than I; I did not like to think he would scorn to strike me a foul blow, knowing all the while that I had struck him many such blows. I was forced to confess to myself that he was a squarer man than I, and that hurt me more than anything he could have done to me. It is the same with his enemies now. They know he is white, and they feel that they are sneaks. That galls them.” “Let Frank Merriwell alone, Rattleton. He has a level head, and he can take care of himself.”