The Widow OCallaghans Boys | Page 7

b'ys, heads up and do your bist!" she said the next morning as she went to her work.
But it was one thing to hold up their heads at the shanty, and quite another to hold them up on the noisy, swarming campus where they knew nobody, and where the ill-bred bullies of the school felt free to jeer and gibe at their poor clothing and their shy, awkward ways.
"Patrick O'Callaghan!" yelled Jim Barrows derisively.
It was recess and the campus was overflowing with boys and girls, but Pat was alone. "Just over from the 'ould coonthry'," he continued. "You can tell by his clothes. He got wet a-comin', and just see how they've shrunk!"
The overgrown, hulking fellow lounged closer to the tall and slender Irish boy, followed by the rough set that acknowledged him as a leader. Some measured the distance from the ends of Pat's jacket sleeves to his wrists, while others predicted the number of days that must elapse before his arms burst through the sleeves.
The spirit of the country-bred boy quailed before this coarse abuse, which he knew not how to resent. He glanced about him, but no way of escape offered. He was hemmed in. And then the bell struck. Recess was over. He thought of his brothers in different grades from himself, though in the same building. "Is there them that makes it hot for 'em when they can?" he said anxiously to himself. "We'll have to be stayin' more together mornin's and noons and recesses, so we will."
But staying together did not avail. Jim Barrows and his set found more delight in tormenting several unresisting victims than they could possibly have enjoyed with only one.
"Ah, but this nignaggin's hard to stand!" thought Pat a week later. He was on his way to school. Pat was always last to get off on account of his work. That morning Jim Barrows was feeling particularly valiant. He thought of the "O'Callaghan tribe," as he called them, and his spirits rose. He was seventeen and large for his age. "Them low Irish needs somebody to keep 'em to their places," he said to himself, "and I'm the one to do it."
Just then he spied Andy a few steps ahead of him, Andy, who was only eleven, and small and frail. Two strides of his long legs overtook the little boy. A big, ugly hand laid itself firmly on the shrinking little shoulder. Words of abuse assailed the sensitive ears, and were followed by a rude blow. Then Jim Barrows, regarding his duty done for that time, lounged on, leaving the little fellow crying pitifully.
A few moments later, Pat came along, and, finding his favorite brother crying, insisted upon knowing the reason. And Andy told him. With all the abuse they had borne, not one of the brothers had been struck before. As Pat listened his anger grew to fury. His blue eyes flashed like steel.
"Cheer up, Andy!" he said, "and run on to school. You needn't be afraid. I can't go with you; I've business on hand. But you needn't be afraid."
He had just ten minutes till school would call. Who was that, two blocks off, loitering on a corner? Was it?--it was Jim Barrows.
[Illustration: "'Cheer up, Andy!' he said."]
With a dogged step that did not seem hurried, Pat yet went rapidly forward. Straight up to the bully he walked and looked him firmly in the eye. "You struck my brother Andy because you thought you could," he said. And then, in the language of those Western boys, "he lit into him." "'Tis Andy's fist is on you now!" he cried, while he rained blows on the hulking coward, who did not offer to defend himself. "And there!" with a tremendous kick as Jim Barrows turned to run, "is a taste of his foot. Touch him again if you dare!"
Needless to say, he didn't dare. "I hear your brother Andy's been fighting," said the principal, as he stopped Pat the next day in the street. "At least, there are marks of Andy's fist and Andy's foot on Jim Barrows." His eyes twinkled as he spoke and then grew grave again. "Fighting's a bad thing in general, but you are excusable, my lad, you are excusable."
Pat looked after the principal going with a quick firm step on his busy way, and thought him the finest man in town, for, so far, nobody had given the poor Irish boy a word of sympathy and encouragement.
That evening Pat ventured to tell his mother.
"And so that's what the principal said, is it?" commented Mrs. O'Callaghan. "He's a man of sinse. Your father was a man of great sinse, Pat. Fightin' is a bad thing, so it is. But your father's gone, and it's you must kape the little wans from harm in his