"You will, hey?" queried a revolving voice, as the boy twirled past again--this time so near that Billy felt his taunting breath blown in his face. "Yes, I 'will, hey'!" said Billy, viciously; and with a side-sweeping, flat-handed lick that sounded like striking a rusty sheet of tin, the crownless "plug" went spinning into the gutter, while, as suddenly, the assaulted little stranger, with a peculiarly pallid smile about his lips and an electric glitter in his eye, adroitly flung his left hand forward, smiting his insulter such a blow in the region of the brow that the unguarded Billy went tumbling backward, his plucky assailant prancing wildly around his prostrate form. "Oh! come and see me!" snarled the strange boy, in a contemptuous tone, cocking his fists up in a scientific manner, and dropping into a stoop- shouldered swagger that would have driven envy into the heart of a bullying hack-driver. "Git the bloke on his pins!" he sneered, turning to the crowd.-- "S'pose I'm goin' to hit a man w'en he's down?" But his antagonist needed no such assistance. Stung with his unlooked-for downfall, bleeding from the first blow ever given him by mortal boy, and goaded to absolute frenzy by the taunts of his swaggering enemy, Billy sprang to his feet, and a moment later had succeeded in closing with the boy in a rough-and-tumble fight, in which his adversary was at a disadvantage, being considerably smaller, hampered, too, with his loose, unbuttoned coat and baggy trousers. But, for all that, he did some very efficient work in the way of a deft and telling blow or two upon the nose of his overpowering foe, who sat astride his wriggling body, but wholly unable to get in a lick. "Durn you!" said Billy, with his hand gripping the boy's throat, "holler 'nough!" "Holler nothin'!" gurgled the boy, with his eyes fairly starting from his head. "Oh, let him up, Billy," called a compassionate voice from the excited crowd. "Holler 'nough and I will," said Billy, in a tragic whisper in the boy's ear. "Durn ye! holler 'Calf-rope!' " The boy only shook his head, trembled convulsively, let fall his eyelids, and lay limp and, to all appearances, unconscious. The startled Billy loosed his hold, rose half-way to his feet, then fiercely pounced again at his rival. But it was too late.--The ruse had succeeded, and the boy was once more on his feet. "You fight like a dog!" said the strange boy, in a tone of infinite contempt--"and you AIR a dog! Put up yer props like a man and come at me, and I'll meller yer head till yer mother won't know you! Come on! I dare you!"