"Oh, Neale O'Neil!" shrieked Dot. "Do come! Quick! Billy Bumps is eating up Mr. Sneaker Sp'ague--and he's beginning at his hair."
Billy Bumps backed away in time to escape the vigorous blow Neale O'Neil aimed at him with the stick he had picked up. But the old goat had managed to tear loose some of the hair on one side of the odd, old fellow's head, and now stood contemplating the angry and excited Sprague, with the hair hanging out of his mouth and mingling with his own long beard.
"Shorn of my locks! shorn of my locks! Samson has lost his glory and strength--yea, verily!" cried the owner of the hair, mournfully. "Yea, how hath the mighty fallen and the people imagined a vain thing! And if there were anything here hard enough to throw at that old goat!"
Thus getting down to a more practical and modern form of language, Seneca Sprague looked wrathfully around for a club or a rock, nothing less being sufficiently hard to suit him.
"Oh, you mustn't!" cried Dot. "Poor Billy Bumps doesn't know any better. Why, once he chewed up my Alice-doll's best dress. And _I_ didn't hit him for it!"
A comparison of a doll's dress with his own hair did not please Mr. Sprague much. He shook his now ragged head, from which the lock of hair had been torn so roughly. Billy Bumps considered this a challenge and, lowering his horns, suddenly charged the despoiled prophet.
"Drat the beast!" yelled Seneca, forgetting his Scriptural language entirely; and leaped into the air just in time to make a passage for Billy Bumps between his long legs.
Slam! went Billy's horns against the end of the hen-house. Mr. Sprague was not there to catch the goat on the rebound, for, leaving his bag of apples, he rushed for the side gate and got out upon Willow Street without much regard for the order of his going, voicing prophecies this time that had only to do with Billy Bumps' immediate future.
The disturbance brought Ruth and Agnes running from the house, but only in time to see the wrathful Seneca Sprague, his linen duster flapping behind him, as he disappeared along Willow Street. When Ruth heard about Billy Bumps' banquet, she sent the bag of apples to Seneca Sprague's little shanty which he occupied, down on the river dock.