A wavering look of indecision crept into Sam Hinkley’s pug-nosed countenance. He would have liked to have the last few moments over again. He felt that he would have acted differently. But he tried to brazen it out.
“You strolling vagabond from goodness knows where, take that!”
It was a vicious blow, with plenty of force behind it, for Sam, although a bully and not possessed of an overabundance of courage, was still wiry and well muscled. But to his surprise his blow did not land. It should have collided with Ned’s chin, but when its force was expended, Ned was not there.
He had stepped neatly aside and allowed Sam to launch his thunderbolt harmlessly. Sam’s friends, grouped beneath the veranda on the sidewalk, closed into a compact little crowd. Plainly Sam was not going to carry all before him as had been his habit hitherto. His cronies saw this at once and some of them inwardly rejoiced.
The office of the little hotel was deserted, and nobody interfered. Sam gathered himself together to renew the combat. His brow grew black. Ned stood waiting. He made no attempt to defend himself. He merely eyed Sam Hinkley with a look of contempt that maddened that pugnacious bully.
“Thought you were going to fight!” roared Sam.
“As I told you before, I’m not a fighter.”
Sam rashly interpreted this as being a sign of weakness. He rushed in once more, swinging his big fists with more vigor than science. Once more Will-o’-the-Wisp Ned was not where he ought to have been, and Sam, carried off his feet by the vigor of his unopposed onslaught, collided with a chair, tripped, and fell headlong on the floor to the porch.
This time the laugh that went up was not at Ned’s expense. The boy stood in the same quiet attitude while Sam, his face crimson with anger and mortification, gathered himself up.
“This ain’t fighting!” he bellowed angrily.
“You can call it anything you like--an acrobatic performance if you wish,” rejoined Ned, without raising his voice or changing his position.
Now there is nothing more irritating than to lose your temper and to make an exhibition of yourself, while the one your rage is directed at stands as steady and unmoved as a rock, hardly deigning to reply to either threats or onslaughts.