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