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 solitude before escaping to the cool assuagement of the back-yard pump.

Yet history would be false to record this as the end of the combat. For Piggie's wounds rankled in his memory, and two days later, as he stood in the doorway of his father's meat-shop, he beheld Lonely weighed down with a clothes-basket heaped with bread,—the faithful Plato having developed an unlooked-for attack of the blind staggers.

Piggie accepted this as the opportunity of a lifetime, and as the baker's son walked by in his innocent and unsuspecting pride of superiority, Piggie, in the security of his own home circle, swung vigorously out and soundly kicked his late conqueror.

Lonely dropped the basket, and made for his assailant. That youth, who had felt so well protected by the shadowing wing of the parental roof, fled into the store. It so chanced that his father was busy in the refrigerator, at the moment, though it is doubtful if even the elder Brennan could have stopped Lonely's fiery pursuit. Seeing himself helpless there, Piggie bolted for the stairway which led up to the Brennan place of residence, immediately