And in the centre of a circle of jeering, laughing fools, that seemed to take what was passing as part of the fun of the fair, was Tom o' Bill's, flushed with drink and his exertions, in whose arms panted and struggled a young lass of some nineteen years. She was somewhat fantastically dressed in a long scarlet cloak, and her skirt was shorter by an inch or two than a modest maiden's should be. She wore no headgear, and her long lustrous hair, black as midnight and with ripples that just escaped being curls, fell in wild confusion about a face of purest oval and over a pair of eyes that now gleamed with mingled terror and passion as she panted and writhed in the clasp of the burly gamekeeper, beating with small, brown, clenched fist the mocking lips he sought to press to hers. Near by another woman, an old, dishevelled hag, shrieked, and swore, and hit, and scratched, and kicked in the grasp of that drunken reprobate, Bill Bradbury. She, too, I guessed, was a gipsy, and it was clear she was striving to help the younger woman, while Bill urged his son: "Stick to it, Tom. I'll hold the old bitch. Ha' your will o' the young 'un." "By your leave, no," I cried, as I inserted my right hand in Tom's neck gear, and with a sudden wrench sent him reeling on his heels into the crowd. "You'll reckon with me first." "And who the hell are you?" he spluttered, as he recovered his balance. "Oh! it's th' parson's lad o' Pole Moor. Well, I've a score to settle with th' owd 'chart-i'-heaven, an' I reckon I may as well pay it th' young whelp." And he came for me with a leap his arm crooked for a blow, and his huge fist clenched. "A feight a feight," cried the mob. "Make a ring, and fair do's." A hurried glance showed me the girl, still panting and trembling, and arranging the folds of her disordered dress about a heaving bosom, clinging to the old beldam whom Bill had cast roughly from him when I sent his son whirling. Now I'm no fighting man, and never was. I had no more notion of the noble art of self-defence than a boy perforce picks up in his schooldays' scrimmages. Moreover, my reverend father had always impressed upon me that if an adversary smote me on one cheek it was my Christian duty to turn to him the other also. But that was a doctrine I had always regarded as a counsel of perfection, and clearly, unless I had mind to be pounded to a jelly, which I certainly had not, this was no occasion for its practical application, for Tom o' Bill's fists were hovering about my head and chest, and I'd much ado to keep clear of them. Of course the odds seemed all against me, for your gamekeeper is ever at home in a brawl.