The sound of shouting came from near at hand. He lifted his face, that showed pitiful as a child's, and looked across the gorse. He saw four men with their backs to a peat-rick, and a crowd of others rushing to the attack. He heard the rattle of sticks, and a clear, wild laugh that could come from none but Griff. The childishness smoothed itself out of his face, and his mouth grew firm. He forgot that he was a miserable sinner, forgot that he had been like to drop with weariness, forgot everything in earth or sky, except the rain of body-blows. The old moor-blood, swift and hot, was awakened; not for nothing had his forebears, like Griff's own, been reared through long centuries on the peaty uplands. He ran towards the peat-rick, and as he ran he found time to think that now he could wipe out that blood-stain once for all: Griff Lomax, his friend, was fighting against odds up there, and he would save him. Another flash, and he saw that God had given him one more clear chance, that the Almighty had stooped to work directly on his behalf. So, with a jumble of sheer fighting instinct, a sense of God's personal intervention, and an itch for the squaring of accounts, he rushed into the thick of it; but the moor instinct was uppermost. Strangeways had his knife a shade too close to his enemy's heart, and Griff could not move a muscle to defend himself. But Strangeways got no further: he felt a pair of big, vice-like hands at his throat, and he thought his time was come. The preacher flung him back, half strangled, and picked up a stick lying at his feet, and laid about him merrily. They fell like acorns in a gale, till Gabriel Hirst shouted to Reddiough and the rest to leave their peat-rick. They rushed forward elbow to elbow, and those who were left of the nineteen broke and fled, crying for quarter. Then Gabriel Hirst cried, "Stop!" And the three poachers and the one man of God looked into each other's faces, and gripped each other's hands, and went to see what was amiss with their fallen comrade. Lomax was sitting up on his elbow by this time. "What is it, old fellow?" asked the preacher, fondling his hand in a silly, motherly way. "A bit dazed--nothing at all--have we licked the beggars?" "Licked 'em all to fits, sir; an' a grand fight it war," spoke up Will Reddiough. Griff laughed at that, and got on to his feet. His victims had, one by one, done the same; for Griff's blows were hard, but their skulls were harder still. Then, after awhile, the defeated band came slinking back in twos and threes, and Lomax leaned against the peat-rick while he said his say.