I heard them appoint a flat place beside the burn, just on the edge of the bog, and watched them trooping out of the yard. The rabble went first, with a great semblance of valour, and the brown-faced stranger, with a sardonic grin on his countenance, stepped jauntily behind. Now I dearly love a fight, but yet I scarce thought fit to go and look on with the rest; so I had Maisie saddled, and rode after them, that I might look like some chance passer-by stopping to witness the encounter. When I came up to the place, there were already some thirty men collected. It was a green spot by the side of the Hawes burn, with the frost not lifted from the grass; and in the burn itself the ice lay thick, for it flows sluggishly like all bogland waters, The place was beaten down as if folk were used to go there, and here the men made a ring about their champion, some helping him to unbuckle his belt, some giving advice about how to close with his adversary. The adversary himself stood waiting their pleasure with the most unconcerned air, whistling "The Green Holms o’ Linton," and stamping his feet on the ground to keep himself warm. In a little the two were ready, and stood facing each other on the cold moor. A whistling wind came in short blasts from the hills, and made their ears tingle, and mine also, till I wished that I were one of the two to have some chance of warming my blood. But when once the fight began, I thought little more of the cold. The countryman gripped the stranger round the middle and tugged desperately to throw him. Up and down, backwards and forwards they went, kicking up in their struggle pieces of turf and little stones. Once they were all but in the water, but the stranger, seeing his peril, made a bold leap back and dragged the other with him. And now I feared that it was going to go hard with the succourer of distressed dogs; for his unwieldy opponent was pressing so heavily upon him that I expected every moment to see him go down. Once I caught sight of his face, and, to my surprise, it was calm as ever; the very straw he had been chewing before being still between his teeth.