"Are you blind, that you run right under a fellow's horse that way ?" David sprang quickly to one side, and the horseman drew up his nag with a jerk and looked down at him.

It was Lester Brigham, one of the neighborhood boys of whom we have never before had occasion to speak.
He was comparatively a new resident in that country.

He had been there only about a year, but during that time he had made himself heartily detested by almost all the boys about Rochdale.

Of course he had his cronies--every fellow has; but all the best youngsters, like Don and Bert Gordon and Fred and Joe Packard, would have little to do with him.

He had lived in the North until the close of the war, and then his father removed to Mississippi, purchased the plantation adjoining General Gordon's, and began the cultivation of cotton.
Mr.Brigham was said to be the richest man in that county, and Lester had more fine things than all the rest of the boys about there put together.