merry-making Hunstonians. Varney's gaze went round the circle of faces
and saw inefficiency, shiftlessness, and failure everywhere stamped
upon them. Suddenly his wandering eye was arrested by a face of quite a
different sort. Directly opposite stood the eccentric young man of the
row-boat, watching the show out of listless eyes whose expression never
changed.
"On that horse-block," said Peter, raising his voice to carry above an
outburst of catcalls and allegedly humorous comment, "stands the Hunston
Reform Movement. Giving 'em a ripping talk, too--all out of Bryce, Mill,
and the other fellows."
But at that moment, as luck had it, the oratory came to a sudden end. A
sportive bull-pup, malevolently released by some one in the crowd,
danced up to the horse-block, barking joyfully, and made a lightning
dive for the spellbinder's legs. The spellbinder dexterously
side-stepped; the dog's aim was diverted from that fleshy portion of the
thigh which his fancy had selected; but his snapping teeth closed firmly
in the tail of the pretty light-gray coat, which the little man wore
rather long according to the mode of the day. And there he swung,
kicking and snarling, squirming and grunting, in the liveliest fashion
imaginable.
Merry pandemonium broke out among the onlookers; they howled with
shameless delight. It was hardly a pleasant scene to witness, though
redeemed by the little orator's gameness. His face, when he took in what
had happened to him, slowly turned the color of a sheet of white paper.
With indescribable dignity, he descended from his rostrum, carrying the
dog along, and walked out into the ring. In front of a tall,
loose-jointed, scraggly-mustached fellow he paused, and stared him in
the eye with steady fixity.
"T-t-take your d-d-damned d-dog off me, Hackley," he said, stuttering
badly, but very cool.
But Hackley backed away, shaking his head and bellowing with laughter.
In an ecstasy of delight, the onlookers began pressing more closely
about the men, narrowing the circle. And then it was that Peter, quite
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