me lend you $175 and go down and pay off Clud."
In that moment the current of the boy's life was changed. The first vital, definite spark of manhood was struck from his fiber, hammered out—after the fashion of such sparks—on the hard anvil of adversity. He sprang to his feet.
"I got myself into this mess," he cried passionately, "and I'm not going to use a friend to climb out. How do I know how long you'd have to wait to get your money back? Anyway, you were against this business from the start. Why should you get mixed up in it? If I've got a licking coming to me out of this I'll take it."
Tom Woods' grip on his pipe relaxed. He was conscious, all at once, that this was a November day, and that the ground was damp, and that he was rapidly becoming chilled. He scrambled to his feet.
"You're not sore at me?" Bert asked. His tone said that, sore or not, his mind was fixed.
"Sore?" The Butterfly Man laughed to himself. "Bert, they may get you down on your back, and you may have a tough time of it, but they'll never lick you."
The boy's face seemed older, more mature, as he rode back to Springham. The crowd was gone from in front of the farmhouse; the auction was over. Reaching the store he went in and, bluntly and concisely, told Sam the story of what he had seen that day.
