“We’ve only been playing with you so far Charley; so you had better not try to come any more of your Regulator tricks on us.  We don’t want to fight, but we shall defend ourselves.”

“If you had attended to your own affairs, you would not have been obliged to defend yourselves,” said Charles, sullenly.

“What sort of fellows do you suppose we are?” said Harry.  “If you expected us to stand still and see thirty fellows pitch on one, you are very much mistaken.”

“Come, Lee,” said Frank, taking the former by the arm, “I guess we can go now.  We’ll see you out of harm’s way.”

The crest-fallen Regulators divided right and left, and allowed Frank and his companions to depart, unmolested.  They accompanied Lee almost to the miserable hovel he called “home,” and, when about to bid him good-night, he said, with some feeling,

“I’ll remember you, boys; and, if it ever comes handy, you will find that Lee Powell has got feelings, as well as any one else.”

And he sprang over a fence, and disappeared.

CHAPTER VII.

The Revenge.

While Frank and his companions were accompanying Lee toward home, some of the Regulators were indulging in feelings of the deepest malice; and there were about a dozen of them—­Frank’s old enemies—­who determined that he should not go unpunished.  But there were others who began to see how cowardly they had acted in attacking a defenseless boy, for the only reason that he was a bad boy, and to fear that they had lost the good-will of Frank and his associates.  The village boys, with a few exceptions, were accustomed to look up to Frank as a sort of leader; not that he aspired to the position, but his generosity, and the easy way he had of settling the disputes that sometimes arose among the boys, had won for him many a fast friend.  We have seen, however, that he was not beloved by all; every good boy has his enemies, and Frank, of course, had his share of them.  They were boys who were jealous of him, and hated him because he held a position in the estimation of the village people to which they could not attain.  But this class was very small, comprising, as we have said, about a dozen of the Regulators; and, while they were enraged at their defeat, and studying plans for revenge, the others were repenting of their folly, and trying to think of some way by which they might regain their lost reputation.

Charles’s overbearing and haughty manner was so different from Frank’s kind, obliging ways, that they had already grown tired of his company, and began to think seriously of having nothing more to do with him; and the things that had just transpired served to convince them that the sooner they left him the better.

As soon as Lee and his gallant defenders had disappeared, one of the Regulators remarked,

“Well, boys, I don’t call this a paying business, trying to thrash a boy who has done us no harm.”