Floundering and tumbling against the frail boards of the shed, the two men came out at the door in a struggling knot: Ogle wrestling and striking at random, while the other, cunning with a life's blindness, kept his own head safe, and hung as a dog hangs to a bull. His hands gripped his victim by ear and hair, while the thumbs still drove at the eyes the mess of smoking lime that clung and dripped about Ogle's head. It trickled burning through his hair, and it blistered lips and tongue, as he yelled and yelled again in the extremity of his anguish. Over they rolled before the doorway; and Ogle, snatching now at last instead of striking, tore away the hands from his face. "Fight you level, Dan Ogle, fight you level now!" Blind George gasped between quick breaths. "Hit me now you're blind as me! Hit me! Knock me down! Eh?" Quickly he climbed to his feet, and aimed a parting blow with the stick that hung from his wrist. "Dead?" he whispered hoarsely. "Not afore I've paid you! No!" He might have stayed to strike again, but his own hands were blistered in the struggle, and he hastened off toward the bank, there to wash them clear of the slaking lime. Away on the wharf the dog was yelping and choking on its chain like a mad thing. Screaming still, with a growing hoarseness, and writhing where he lay, the blinded wretch scratched helplessly at the reeking lime that scorched his skin and seared his eyes almost to the brain. Grimes came running in shirt and trousers, and, as soon as he could find how matters stood, turned and ran again for oil. "Good God!" he said. "Lime in his eyes! Slaking lime! Why--why--it must be the blind chap! It must! Fight him level, he said--an' he's blinded him!..." * * * * * There was a group of people staring at the patients' door of the Accident Hospital when Viney reached the spot. He was busy enough with his own thoughts, but he stopped, and stared also, involuntarily. The door was an uninteresting object, however, after all, and he turned: to find himself face to face with one he well remembered. It was the limy man he had followed from Blue Gate to the Hole in the Wall, and then lost sight of. Grimes recognised Viney at once as Ogle's visitor of the morning. "That's a pal o' yourn just gone in there," he said. Viney was taken aback. "A pal?" he asked. "What pal?" "Ogle--Dan Ogle. He's got lime in his eyes, an' blinded." "Lime? Blinded? How?" "I ain't goin' to say nothing about how--I dunno, an' 'tain't my business. He's got it, anyhow. There's a woman in there along of him--his wife, I b'lieve, or something. You can talk to her about it, if you like, when she comes out. I've got nothing to do with it."