For once that Realf managed to land a blow, Reuben landed a couple, and with twice as much weight behind them. The younger man soon began to look green and sick, he staggered about, and flipped, while the sweat poured off his forehead into his eyes. Reuben breathed stertorously and could scarcely see out of his left eye, but was otherwise game. Pete felt prouder of him than ever. Suddenly Backfield's fist crashed into Realf's body, full on the mark. The wind rushed out of him as out of a bellows, and he doubled up like a screen. This time he made no effort to rise; he lay motionless, one arm thrown out stiff and jointless as a bough, while a little blood-flecked foam oozed from between his teeth. "You've done it!" cried Pete. Reuben had flopped down in a heap on the settle, and his son ran off for help. He flung open the door, and nearly fell over Tilly who was cowering behind it. § 5. "Here--bring some water!" cried Peter, too much relieved to see her to be surprised at it. Tilly flung one wide-eyed glance over her shoulder into the room where young Realf lay, and dashed off for water and towels, while Pete fetched a piece of raw meat out of the larder. It was a minute or two before Realf opened his swollen, watering eyes, and gazed up bewildered into the face of the woman he had said his prayers to for a dozen Sundays. She held his head in the crook of her arm, and wiped the froth and blood from his lips. "Better now?" asked Pete. Realf suddenly seemed to shrink into himself. The next minute he was swaying unsteadily on his legs, refusing the hands held out to support him. "I'm going home," he mumbled through his bruised lips. "I'll täake you," said Pete cheerily. But Realf of Grandturzel shook his head. His humiliation was more than he could bear. Without another look at Pete or Tilly, or at Reuben holding the raw chop to his eye, he turned and walked out of the room with bent head and dragging footsteps. For a moment Pete looked as if he would follow him, but Reuben impatiently called him back. "Leave the cub alone, can't you? Let him go and eat grass." Tilly stood motionless in the middle of the room, her little nose wrinkled with horror at the bloodstains on the floor and at Reuben whose face was all bruised and swollen and shiny with the juice of the raw meat. Pete saw her shudder, and resented it. "It wur a präaper fight," he declared. "You want to manage them feet of yourn a bit slicker, fäather--but you wur justabout smart wud your fists." Tilly's blood ran thick with disgust; she turned from them suddenly--that coarse, bloodthirsty, revolting pair--and ran quickly out of the room. She ran out of the house. Away on Boarzell a man plodded and stumbled. She saw him stagger as the wind battered him, reel and nearly fall among the treacheries of the dead heather. He was like a drunken man, and she knew that he was drunk with shame.