



Produced by Annie R. McGuire








[Illustration: HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE]

       *       *       *       *       *

VOL. II.--NO. 104. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. PRICE FOUR
CENTS.

Tuesday, October 25, 1881. Copyright, 1881, by HARPER & BROTHERS. $1.50
per Year, in Advance.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration]

VIC WHITNEY'S REVENGE.

BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON.


All the boys cried, "Shame!"

Tom Reid, who was scarcely regarded as a boy now, so nearly grown was
he, went up to Hen Little, and catching him by the shoulder and shaking
him, said:

"It seems to me you pick out your boy to bully. You ought to be ashamed
of yourself, to hit a fellow under your size and not half your strength,
and I've a notion to thrash you for it myself."

Nobody heard what Hen Little replied, because all the boys were talking
at once now; but somehow, when Vic Whitney rose from the ground, his
clothes torn, his nose bleeding, and his books muddy, everybody saw that
he was going to say something, and everybody listened. What he said was
this:

"Hen Little, I've borne with you for two years; I've taken all your
meannesses as mere teasing, and I've thought you only a little rough;
but now I tell you you're a coward and a bully, and I give you warning
that I'll whip you for this day's work, if it's ten years hence."

"Boys," said Tom Reid, "I move that, as students of this High School, we
hereby exclude Hen Little from all our games and sports, and regard him
as an outside barbarian, until he makes a proper apology to Vic Whitney
for what he has done."

"Second the motion!" cried a dozen voices, while all the girls clapped
their hands.

"Wait a minute, please," called Vic; "don't put that motion, Tom. Let me
say a word. I thank you all for your sympathy, but I beg you not to do
what you're doing. I've made this matter a quarrel now, and it's my
quarrel, not yours. I've told Hen Little that I shall whip him for this,
and I shall do it, you may depend. But that ought to settle it, so far
as you are concerned. Hen is bigger than I am, and much stronger; but I
shall thrash him in due time, and it ain't fair to punish him twice for
one offense. If you punish him, I can't, without doing an injustice, and
I don't want to do that. Please withdraw your motion, Tom."

"But this sort of thing is a disgrace to the school," said Tom.

"Very well; but I am going to punish it myself," replied Vic, "and that
will clear the school. I've a right to be the one to do it."

"But you can't thrash Hen Little," cried half a dozen boys in a breath.

"No, not now. But I shall be able to do it after a while. Trust me, and
do me the favor I have asked. Withdraw your motion, and treat Hen as if
nothing had happened, and I'll take care of the rest."

There was something in Vic's manner which awed the boys into respectful
obedience. They were outraged with Hen Little, and would have enjoyed
"making the school too hot for him," but they obeyed Vic Whitney. When
Vic had secured their promise to this effect, he gathered up his books
and walked away toward his home.

Little had teased him mercilessly during the whole of the two years
since they both entered the High School, but Vic had borne it all as
mere teasing, not to be resented. At the end of the last term, however,
Vic had successfully offered himself for examination with the class in
advance of his own, having worked of nights to get ahead, and in this
way he had distanced his own class, and made himself a sort of hero in
the school. At the same examination Hen Little had failed to pass with
the class, and his mortification took the form of hatred of his former
classmate, who had succeeded in making two steps forward while he failed
to make one. His teasing became positive persecution, but Vic continued
to endure it with a smiling face.

One day, however, just after school, as Vic was starting toward home,
with his books under his arm, he accidentally passed too near a
gymnasium rope on which Hen Little was swinging. A slight collision was
the result, and Hen lost