But Harry, who now began to recollect himself, wiped his tears with his hand, and, looking up, asked them with a firm tone of voice and a steady countenance, why they meddled with him; then, swinging round, he disengaged himself at once from all who had taken hold of him. The greatest part of the company gave back at this question, and seemed disposed to leave him unmolested; but Master Mash, who was the most quarrelsome and impertinent boy present, advanced, and looking at Harry with a contemptuous sneer, said, "this is the way we always treat such little blackguards as you, and if you have not had enough to satisfy you, we'll willingly give you some more." "As to all your nicknames and nonsense," answered Harry, "I don't think it worth my while to resent them; but though I have suffered Master Merton to strike me, there's not another in the company shall do it, or, if he chooses to try, he shall soon find whether or not I am a coward." Master Mash made no answer to this, but by a slap of the face, which Harry returned by a punch of his fist, which had almost overset his antagonist, in spite of his superiority of size and strength. This unexpected check from a boy, so much less than himself, might probably have cooled the courage of Mash, had he not been ashamed of yielding to one whom he had treated with so much unmerited contempt. Summoning, therefore, all his resolution, he flew at Harry like a fury, and as he had often been engaged in quarrels like this, he struck him with so much force, that, with the first blow he aimed, he felled him to the ground. Harry, foiled in this manner, but not dismayed, rose in an instant, and attacked his adversary with redoubled vigour, at the very moment when he thought himself sure of the victory. A second time did Mash, after a short but severe contest, close with his undaunted enemy, and, by dint of superior strength, roughly hurled him to the ground.