"It isn't that. I don't think I'm much afraid, although I don't like to be pounded or to pound anybody. I think I'd rather be whipped than to be made fun of, though. But my father used to say that people who fight generally do so because they are afraid of somebody else, more than they are of the one they fight with." "I believe that's a fact," said Bob. "But Riley aches for a good thrashing." "I know that, and I feel like giving him one, or taking one myself, and I think I shall fight him before I've done. But father used to say that fists could never settle between right and wrong. They only show which is the stronger, and it is generally the mean one that gets the best of it." "That's as sure as shootin'," said Bob. "Pewee could use you up. Pewee thinks he's the king, but laws! he's only Riley's bull-dog. Riley is afraid of him, but he manages to keep the dog on his side all the time." "My father used to say," said Jack, "that brutes could fight with force, but men ought to use their wits." "You seem to think a good deal of what your father says,--like it was your Bible, you know." "My father's dead," replied Jack. "Oh, that's why. Boys don't always pay attention to what their father says when he's alive." "Oh, but then my father was--" Here Jack checked himself, for fear of seeming to boast. "You see," he went on, "my father knew a great deal. He was so busy with his books that he lost 'most all his money, and then we moved to the Indian Reserve, and there he took the fever and died; and then we came down here, where we owned a house, so that I could go to school." "Why don't you give Will Riley as good as he sends?" said Bob, wishing to get away from melancholy subjects. "You have got as good a tongue as his." "I haven't his stock of bad words, though." "You've got a power of fun in you, though,--you keep everybody laughing when you want to, and if you'd only turn the pumps on him once, he'd howl like a yellow dog that's had a quart o' hot suds poured over him out of a neighbor's window. Use your wits, like your father said. You've lived in the woods till you're as shy as a flying-squirrel. All you've got to do is to talk up and take it rough and tumble, like the rest of the world. Riley can't bear to be laughed at, and you can make him ridiculous as easy as not." The next day, at the noon recess, about the time that Jack had finished helping Bob Holliday to find some places on the map, there came up a little shower, and the boys took refuge in the school-house. They must have some amusement, so Riley began his old abuse. "Well, greenhorn from the Wildcat, where's the black sheep you stole that suit of clothes from?" "I hear him bleat now," said Jack,--"about the blackest sheep I have ever seen." "You've heard the truth for once, Riley," said Bob Holliday.