Laugh! I nearly died over young Berners.

Shinners, scalpers, and tweaks are good too--jolly good!...

but of course all this comes after lamming and tunding....
Come along with me...." "Nit," was Dam's firm but gentle reply, and a little pulse began to beat beneath his cheek bone.
"Oh! Ho!" smiled Master Harberth, "then I'll _begin_ here, and when you're broke and blubbing you'll come with me--and get just double for a start." Dam's spirits rose and he felt almost happy--certainly far better than he had done since the hapless encounter with the bottled adder and his fall from grace.

It was a positive, _joy_ to have an enemy he could tackle, a real flesh-and-blood foe and tormentor that came upon him in broad daylight and in mere human form.
After countless thousands of centuries of awful nightmare struggling--in which he was bound hand-and-foot and doomed to failure and torture from the outset, the sport, plaything, and victim of a fearful, intangible Horror--this would be sheer amusement and recreation.

What could mere man do to _him_, much less mere boy! Why, the most awful torture-chamber of the Holy Inquisition of old was a pleasant recreation-room compared with _any_ place where the Snake could enter.
Oh, if the Snake could only be met and fought in the open with free hands and untrammelled limbs, as Bully Harberth could! Oh, if it could only inflict mere physical pain instead of such agonies of terror as made the idea of any bodily injury--mere cutting, burning, beating, blinding--a trifling nothing-at-all.