The Boys of Bellwood School | Page 8

had been suspended for the day, but the boys hung around the spot. They raced through the house, clambered over the moving frame, and knocked with the workmen's mallets on the rollers to make the hollow echo that was new to them and sounded like music.
The house movers had set the windlass locked, and the strain on the rope brought it taut. The house was anchored about half way up the hill, straining at the giant cable dangerously and on a sharp tilt.
A little urchin was trying to "walk the tightrope," as he called it, as Frank came up, shaping a willow stick with his pocket knife.
"Say, Frank Jordan," cried the lad, "won't you make me a whistle?"
"Of course I will," replied Frank accommodatingly, and got astride a moving timber and set at work. Only a few of the large boys were about the spot. Frank noticed that Gill Mace, the nephew of the village jeweler, was among their number.
Frank soon turned out a first-class whistle for the applicant, who went away tooting at a happy rate. A second urchin preferred a modest request, and Frank had just completed the second whistle when the boy he had sent away contented came back sniveling.
"Why, what's the matter?" inquired Frank sympathizingly.
Between sobs the little fellow related his troubles. Gill Mace had forcibly taken the whistle away from him, and when he had got through testing its merits had pocketed it and sent its owner away with a cuff on the ear.
"I'll give Gill Mace a piece of my mind, just now," declared Frank, hastily getting to the ground. The jeweler's nephew was up to just such mean, unmanly tricks all of the time. Frank felt that he deserved a lesson. Besides, at just the present moment he had no great love for the whole Mace family.
Frank hurried around to the side of the house, to come upon Gill and his companions, who were engaged in leaping across a puddle near a pit in the hillside. He marched right up to the culprit, the little fellow he had befriended trailing after him.
"See here, Gill Mace," cried Frank promptly, "can't you find a little better employment of your time than bullying little children?"
Gill flushed up, but put on a braggart air.
"Any of your business?" he demanded blusteringly.
"I'm making it my business--it ought to be the business of any decent, fair-minded fellow," asserted Frank staunchly.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" demanded Gill, doubling up his fists."
"I'm going to give you just twenty seconds to give that whistle back to that boy, or I'm going to take it out of your hide," declared Frank steadily.
"Oho! you are, eh?" snorted Gill, swelling up and glaring wickedly at Frank. "Well, you won't get the whistle, for it's there in the mud."
"I've a good mind to make you go after it," began Frank, when Gill, making a sudden jump, landed up against him, and dealt him a quick, foul blow below the waist.
"I don't care about dirtying my hands with a thief," answered Gill, "but--"
"What's that?" cried Frank, all the pride and anger in his nature coming to the front.
"I said it," replied Gill, keeping up his doubled fists, but edging away, for the look in the eyes of his adversary warned and cowed him.
"You call me a thief, do you?" demanded Frank.
"Yes; you stole a diamond bracelet from my uncle's store this morning."
"It's a falsehood!" shouted Frank--"a falsehood as foul and dirty as the muck in that pool! That for you!"
Frank's arm shot out like a piston-rod, and into the mud-puddle, head over heels, went Gill Mace with a frightened howl.
CHAPTER V
THE RUINED HOUSE
"Well, it's been a pretty lively day for me, and every move I make I seem to be getting deeper and deeper into trouble."
This was the sentiment expressed by Frank as he retired to rest at the end of the most eventful day in his young life. The hours had indeed been full of incidents. He reviewed them all as he lay, his head on his pillow.
Frank smiled to himself as he remembered Gill Mace. The boy who had called Frank a thief was unable to repeat the vile accusation when he emerged from the puddle into which Frank had pushed him. His mouth was full of mud, his hair was a dripping mop, his clothes were plastered with it. Frank had waited to respond to any later move that Gill might decide on. The jeweler's nephew, however, made none. As he emerged from the puddle three schoolgirls, arms linked in friendly companionship, passed the spot. They noticed Gill and tittered, and Gill sneaked away without so much as even glancing at Frank again.
"I always thought you three fellows a pretty good lot," Frank spoke to the companions of Gill. "I'd hate