Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/92

 When the Preacher emerged, flushed and heated, he once more looked carefully about. But no one was to be seen.

"Now, I shall go to young Master O'Malley's parents, at once, and advise them of this depravity, this vicious and degrading habit!"

"You do an' I 'll sick my goat onto you!" said a challenging voice, from the rear of the back fence.

"What—what 's this?" demanded the Preacher. "Where are you, sir?"

"I 'm right here! An' I say if you go tattlin' round about me I 'll sick Gilead onto you until you wish you had wings!"

And Lonely turned wearily homeward, tired of the dispiriting drama. This was what he got, he told himself, for playing with preachers' sons, and mixing up with people who wear velvet and ruffles!

Forthwith, from that day of wrath, however, Lionel Clarence was rigidly and sternly enjoined from companionship with Lonely O'Malley. So the New Boy was thrown on his own devices. He even once more took up with Annie Eliza, and in his desolation of