Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/270

238 Goliath's cry, "Give me a Man, that we may fight together," was uttered in contempt of David's size. But in the days of the Philistines, no less than now, a very small hand, directed by an accurate eye and a powerful conviction, was found quite large enough to inject a fatal significance into so simple a weapon as a slung-shot.

Neil Morgan was only one year older than Kit, but he was several years larger and heavier, and he scoffed at Kit's peaceful rule of his followers. He himself went in for tearing off his coat at the slightest provocation, and, in the parlance of the boys, "squaring up," calling out as he did so:

"Come on! If any one wants to fight, let him come on!"

His combative fists had long burned to belabour Kit's calm, well-tempered anatomy, and Kit's attitude towards the use of his sobriquet furnished the opportunity. He publicly announced that Stub was in every way a suitable name for such a stub of a boy, and declared his intention of distinguishing him by it whenever he saw fit.

This coming to Kit's knowledge, he resolved upon Morgan's early downfall.

"Of course she will feel sore about it," he reflected, "but that fellow must be settled."

Kit, like other leaders the world over, through all the ages, exercised his generalship, as he did all else, with the consideration of one fair goddess ever in his mind. He called his goddess Judy. Church records witnessed that she had been baptized Helen Judith, but Judy fell in with his theory regarding easy, comfortable names.

Judy was the passion of Kit's life, the lode-star of his existence. He knew no childish ambition whose realisation was not to benefit

Rh