From this time on the lad was always near me, and gradually became my devoted follower. Although at first I did not care for him much, he finally won my friendship by his faithfulness and good nature. He always assisted me as far as his strength would permit in the work assigned me about the school; thus it was that Little Bob, as he was familiarly known, became a satellite to the group to which I belonged, and so safe from the attacks of the other boys. Brush, Edwin, Warren, Lester, and I were now recognized by all the boys of the school as a "gang," and were spoken of as "the Middle Five." We had fallen into this close companionship without any formal arrangement, and we were regarded as the strongest group between the Big Seven and the other "gangs." Chapter V Warren Brush was a genius as a whittler. He had only one tool, and that was a rusty jack-knife with a single broken blade, and that blade was kept sharp almost to the keenness of a razor. He would take a shapeless piece of wood, out here, out there, scrape at one place, then at another, and go through a series of twists and turns of his strong, deft hands, and at last, with a triumphant smile, hold up to view a wooden horse, buffalo, or some other animal. He had just now finished a little plough which he had been carving for some time, and we, the Middle five, sat in the shade of a tree noisily discussing the accuracy of the work. "Brush, that's pretty good, it's just like the ploughs I've seen," I remarked as I passed the toy to Edwin. "'Tain't good," said Edwin, after he had examined it a while. "I think the handles are too straight." "This ought to be kind of crooked, come down like this," put in Lester, indicating with his finger the outline of the beam as it should have been, according to his notion. Our heads were close together looking at the plough, when a sudden consciousness as of the presence of something disagreeable stole upon us. A sound like the snapping of a twig made us all look up, and there stood Jim, a big boy, one of the worst that ever entered our school, and who had been excluded from all the "gangs" on account of his vicious, meddlesome disposition. With a contemptuous grin, he passed his eyes from one boy to the other, as though to discern the character of each one. When this unpleasant stare fell upon Warren, he bristled up, gave back a defiant look, and kept it steadily upon the unwelcome visitor. Without relaxing the mirthless smile, so characteristic of him, Jim addressed the boy, "Warren, I just come from the spring, where a lot of boys was talking. I heard Gid say that he could lick you. I told him I'd come and tell you what he said. Then he says, 'I don't care, I ain't 'fraid of him!'" "You go and tell Gid," said Warren, springing to his feet, "I can lick two like him, and I'll show him any time he wants me to." The mischief-maker had read well the character of Warren, and had won from him the expected reply.