The Russian rose slowly to his feet, bewildered and half stupefied by the blow and fall. He would probably have done nothing more; but, maddened by the taunts and jeers of the others, he gathered himself together and renewed the attack, but he in vain attempted to seize his active opponent. Godfrey eluded his furious rushes, and before he could recover himself, always succeeded in getting in two or three straight blows, and at last met him, as in his first rush, and knocked him off his feet. By this time Kobylin had had enough of it, and sat on the floor bewildered and crestfallen. Everything that a Russian peasant does not understand savours to him of magic; and that he, Kobylin, should have been thus vanquished by a mere lad seemed altogether beyond nature. He could not understand how it was that he had been unable to grasp his foe, or how that, like a stroke of lightning, these blows had shot into his face. Even the jeering and laughter of his companions failed to stir him. The Russian peasant is accustomed to be beaten, and is humble to those who are his masters. Kobylin rose slowly to his feet. "You have beaten me," he said humbly. "I do not know how; forgive me; I was wrong. I am ignorant, and did not know." "Say no more about it," Godfrey replied. "We have had a quarrel, and there is an end of it. There need be no malice. We are all prisoners here together, and it is not right that one should bully others because he happens to be a little stronger. There are other things besides strength. You behaved badly, and you have been punished. Let us smoke our pipes, and think no more about it." The sensation caused in the ward by the contest was prodigious, and the victory of this lad was as incomprehensible to the others as to Kobylin himself. The rapidity with which the blows were delivered, and the ease with which Godfrey had evaded the rushes of his opponent, seemed to them, as to him, almost magical, and from that moment they regarded Godfrey as being possessed of some strange power, which placed him altogether apart from themselves. Osip and the other men of the same stamp warmly congratulated Godfrey. "What magic is this?" Osip said, taking him by the shoulders and looking with wonder at him. "I have been thinking you but a lad, and yet that strong brute is as a child in your hands. It is the miracle of David and Goliath over again." "It is simply skill against brute force, Osip. I may tell you, what I have not told anyone before since I came here, that my mother was English. I did not say so, because, as you may guess, I feared that were it known and reported it might be traced who I was, and then, instead of being merely classed as a vagabond, I should be sent back to the prison I escaped from, and be put among another class of prisoners."