covered Mealy to hear his father reply to the new boy, "That will do
for you, sir." While Mealy wept he wiped away his tears first with one
hand and then with the other, employing the free hand in fastening
his clothes together. He did not fear the punishment that might be in
store for him. He was thinking of the agony of his next meeting with
Piggy Pennington. Mealy fancied that Abe Carpenter, who was a quiet,
philosophical boy, would not tease him, but horror seized him when he
thought of Piggy.

As Mealy fastened his last button, he felt his father's finger under
his collar, and his own feet shambling blindly over the pebbles, up
the path, into the bushes; he heard the boys in the water laugh with
the new boy, and then--stories differ. The boys say that he howled
lustily, "Oh, pa, I won't do it any more," over and over again. Mealy
Jones says that it didn't hurt a bit.

[Illustration: _He felt his father's finger under his collar and his
own feet shambling_.]

This much is certain: that Master Harold Jones walked through the town
that day a few feet ahead of his fathers who tapped the boy's legs
with a hooked cane whenever his steps lagged. At the door of the Jones
home Mrs. Jones stood to welcome the martial procession, which she
saw, and then heard, approaching some time before it arrived. To his
wife, whose face pictured anxious grief, Mr. Jones said, as he
turned the captive over to her: "I found this young gentleman in
swimming--swimming and fighting. I have attended to his immediate
wants, I believe. I leave him to you."

Harold Jones was but a lad--a good lad whose knowledge of the golden