"But, Dick--the disgrace--you can't fight; you've punished him enough. Think of what you're going to do." "I am thinking," said Trevor, in a quiet, slow way--"thinking that he's an ugly customer, and that his head looks precious hard." "Keep back!"--"Make a ring!"--"Let him have it!" "Now, Barney!" shouted the bystanders. "Here, let me get at him!" shouted Barney. "Call up the police!" said a mounted gentleman. "You can't fight that fellow, sir." "I'm going to try," said Trevor, grimly. There was a buzz of voices, the crowd swayed here and there, and an opening was made--Barney having struggled out of his upper garments, and begun to square--when, to the surprise of all, he was suddenly confronted by the stout-built West-country-man, who had leaped off the box of the barouche, now on the other side of the hill; and before the fellow had recovered from his surprise, he was sent staggering back into the arms of his friends with a sensation as if a hive of bees, suddenly let loose, were buzzing and stinging in his head. That was the end of the engagement, for there was a rush of police through the crowd, people were separated, and by the time Frank Pratt had fought his way out of a state of semi-suffocation, he was standing with his friend fifty yards away, and the constables were hurrying two men off to the station. "Let's get back," said Trevor. "I can't let that fellow bear all the brunt of the affair." Pratt felt disposed to dissuade, but he gave way, and they got to the outskirts with no little difficulty, just in time to see that the barouche horses had been put to, and that the carriage was being driven off the ground with the West-countryman upon the box. "He's out of the pickle, then," said Pratt. "There, come away, man; the police have, for once in a way, caught the right offender; don't let's get mixed up with it any more." "Very well," said Dick, calmly. "I feel better now; but I should have liked to soundly thrash that scoundrel." "It's done for you," said Pratt. "Now let's go and get in your bets." "I'm afraid, Franky," said Trevor, "that you are not only a mercenary man, but a great--I mean little coward." "Quite right--you're quite right," said Pratt. "I am mercenary because the money's useful, and enables a man to pay his laundress; and as to being a coward, I am--a dreadful coward. I wouldn't mind if it were only skin, that will grow again; but fancy being ragged about and muddied in tussle with that fellow! Why, my dear Dick, I should have been six or seven pounds out of pocket in no time." "I wonder who those girls were in the barouche," said Trevor, after a pause. "Daresay you do," was the reply; "so do I. Sweet girls--very; but you may make yourself quite easy; you will never see either of them again." "Don't know," said Trevor, slowly. "This is a very little place, this world, and I have often run against people I knew in the most out-of-the-way places."