bandy legs. And Joe must needs take up the cudgels on behalf of the
oppressed, and chose an original way of punishing the oppressor.
And thus the rolling of the barrel is explained."

At this Mistress Pennyquick broke out into vehement denunciation of
the two boys, but my father silenced her. Quietly he began to
question me: he would take no denial, and drew out of me bit by bit
the whole story of the bullying I had suffered from those two of my
schoolfellows.

And then he was more angry than I had seen him ever before. He
smote the arm of the chair with his great fist, and vowed he would
not have me ill used; and though he said but little, and never once
raised his voice, I knew by the set of his lips and the gleam of
his eye that it would go hard with anyone who baited me again. Then
the captain made a proposition for which I have been thankful all
my life long.

"The moral of it is, Ellery, that Humphrey must be a pupil of mine.

"Give me your arm, boy.

"Ah!" says he, feeling the muscle, which was soft enough, no doubt,
seeing that I was only eleven and had never done anything about the
farm. "We must alter that. Let him come to me twice a week, Ellery,
and he shall learn the arts of self defense, first with nature's
own weapons, for boxing I take to be the true foundation of all
bodily exercise, and afterwards, when he is a little grown, the
more delicate science of swordsmanship, which demands bodily
strength and wits, and to which the other is but a prelude. And I