* PEEP AT OUR NEIGHBORS. 111

who told the schoolmaster. I know that
I did not tell him.

After this adventure with Joe Ball, I
lived in almost as much fear of him as if
he had been a mad dog or a hyena.

It was a very rare thing to see either
Simeon or Randolph—Captain  Ball’s
youngest boys, who were not far from
my own age—without holes in their
stockings, and their elbows seemed al-
ways to have a habit of bursting through
the sleeves of their jackets. And they
were all three such ill-natured and quar-
relsome fellows, that all the children in
school disliked them.

The reason they acted so badly, was