第37章

Allen came strolling by where the pair were sitting; stopped, and said to the tinner;"How are you off for friends, these days?""Well enough off."

"Got a good many?"

"Well, as many as I need."

"A friend is valuable, sometimes-as a protector, you know.What do you reckon would happen if I was to snatch your cap off and slap you in the face with it?""Please don't trouble me, Mr.Allen, I ain't doing anything to you."You answer me! What do you reckon would happen?""Well, I don't know."

Tracy spoke up with a good deal of deliberation and said:

"Don't trouble the young fellow, I can tell you what would happen.""Oh, you can, can you? Boys, Johnny Bull can tell us what would happen if I was to snatch this chump's cap off and slap him in the face with it.

Now you'll see.

He snatched the cap and struck the youth in the face, and before he could inquire what was going to happen, it had already happened, and he was warming the tin with the broad of his back.Instantly there was a rush, and shouts of:

"A ring, a ring, make a ring! Fair play all round! Johnny's grit; give him a chance."The ring was quickly chalked on the tin, and Tracy found himself as eager to begin as he could have been if his antagonist had been a prince instead of a mechanic.At bottom he was a little surprised at this, because although his theories had been all in that direction for some time, he was not prepared to find himself actually eager to measure strength with quite so common a man as this ruffian.In a moment all the windows in the neighborhood were filled with people, and the roofs also.

The men squared off, and the fight began.But Allen stood no chance whatever, against the young Englishman.Neither in muscle nor in science was he his equal.He measured his length on the tin time and again;in fact, as fast as he could get up he went down again, and the applause was kept up in liberal fashion from all the neighborhood around.

Finally, Allen had to be helped up.Then Tracy declined to punish him further and the fight was at an end.Allen was carried off by some of his friends in a very much humbled condition, his face black and blue and bleeding, and Tracy was at once surrounded by the young fellows, who congratulated him, and told him that he had done the whole house a service, and that from this out Mr.Allen would be a little more particular about how he handled slights and insults and maltreatment around amongst the boarders.

Tracy was a hero now, and exceedingly popular.Perhaps nobody had ever been quite so popular on that upper floor before.But if being discountenanced by these young fellows had been hard to bear, their lavish commendations and approval and hero-worship was harder still to endure.He felt degraded, but he did not allow himself to analyze the reasons why, too closely.He was content to satisfy himself with the suggestion that he looked upon himself as degraded by the public spectacle which he had made of himself, fighting on a tin roof, for the delectation of everybody a block or two around.But he wasn't entirely satisfied with that explanation of it.Once he went a little too far and wrote in his diary that his case was worse than that of the prodigal son.

He said the prodigal son merely fed swine, he didn't have to chum with them.But he struck that out, and said "All men are equal.I will not disown my principles.These men are as good as I am."Tracy was become popular on the lower floors also.Everybody was grateful for Allen's reduction to the ranks, and for his transformation from a doer of outrages to a mere threatener of them.The young girls, of whom there were half a dozen, showed many attentions to Tracy, particularly that boarding house pet Hattie, the landlady's daughter.

She said to him, very sweetly, "I think you're ever so nice."And when he said, "I'm glad you think' so, Miss Hattie," she said, still more sweetly, "Don't call me Miss Hattie-call me Puss."Ah, here was promotion! He had struck the summit.There were no higher heights to climb in that boarding house.His popularity was complete.

In the presence of people, Tracy showed a tranquil outside, but his heart was being eaten out of him by distress and despair.

In a little while he should be out of money, and then what should he do?

He wished, now, that he had borrowed a little more liberally from that stranger's store.He found it impossible to sleep.A single torturing, terrifying thought went racking round and round in his head, wearing a groove in his brain: What should he do--What was to become of him? And along with it began to intrude a something presently which was very like a wish that he had not joined the great and noble ranks of martyrdom, but had stayed at home and been content to be merely an earl and nothing better, with nothing more to do in this world of a useful sort than an earl finds to do.But he smothered that part of his thought as well as he could; he made every effort to drive it away, and with fair keep it from intruding a little success, but he couldn't now and then, and when it intruded it came suddenly and nipped him like a bite, a sting, a burn.

He recognized that thought by the peculiar sharpness of its pang.The others were painful enough, but that one cut to the quick when it calm.