"Let her alone!" commanded the man fiercely. Tom turned on him, snarling. He was so enraged that he forgot for the moment to be afraid. Helmford stripped off his beclouded spectacles and handed them to Pearl. He unbelted and dropped his Mackinaw at his feet. "Look out for yourself, Tom Petty!" he said threateningly. "I am going to give you what you have been suffering for ever since you got too big for your mother to spank." They were not unevenly matched as to height and weight. Tom's muscles were fully as well developed, and he was as supple as his antagonist. In a rough and tumble fight he might even have been Helmford's superior. But the latter would not allow the lout to get a wrestler's hold upon him. As Tom charged, Helmford stepped nimbly aside and drove his fist into Tom's face. Had the latter been wise he would have let that blow begin and finish the battle. But such courage as the lout owned was roused by the smart of the blow. His face was a mask of blood as he rushed for Helmford a second time. His antagonist met this onslaught fairly. His hard and capable fists drove in with all the weight of his shoulders behind them, while Tom pawed the air blindly with clutching hands. Tom could not reach his opponent at all; but it was several moments and he was a desperately bruised young man, before this truth came fully home to him. His own arms flung like flails, but to no purpose. Helmford reached his bruised face and battered it with such lusty blows that Tom thought his antagonist must have more than the usual number of fists. Petty staggered; he slipped; he fell to his knees; he got up again. While all the time the blows rained upon him and he was blinded. He began to bleat like a calf in the grip of the butcher. He could not escape. Finally arrived the last and merciful blow--Helmford's right to the point of the jaw. Tom was felled and lay there in the snow, for the moment quite unable to realize where he was or what had happened to him. When he actually came to his senses Joe Helmford had taken Pearl away. They had been ready, as it was, to accompany Miss Sue to the chapel to trim the Christmas tree. But the storekeeper, Cap'n Jonah, and Betty Gallup, were grouped about the fallen lout, and were staring at him. "I tell ye what 'tis," the able seaman said, in her jerky and emphatic way, "once in a while one o' these city fellers does somethin' that ye hafter admire 'em for. Who'd ha' thought Mr. Helmford, whose business 'tis, _he_ says, to teach fishes to hatch their aigs, had so much in him? Why, this Tom Petty's been sufferin' for this beatin' for years, an' there ain't been a loafer around this store with public sperit enough to do it."