My head had begun to clear now, and I was able to look more steadily at my sympathiser. And, as I looked, the feeling came to me that I had seen him before somewhere. That red hair, those glinting eyes, that impressive bulk—it was my old friend Wilberforce Billson and no other—Battling Billson, the coming champion, whom I had last seen fighting at Wonderland under the personal management of Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge. “Did ’e ’it yer?” enquired Mr. Billson. There was only one answer to this. Disordered though my faculties were, I was clear upon this point. I said, “Yes, he did hit me.” “’R!” said Mr. Billson, and immediately passed into the hostelry. It was not at once that I understood the significance of this move. The interpretation I placed upon his abrupt departure was that, having wearied of my society, he had decided to go and have some refreshment. Only when the sound of raised voices from within came pouring through the door did I begin to suspect that in attributing to it such callousness I might have wronged that golden nature. With the sudden reappearance of the barman—who shot out as if impelled by some imperious force and did a sort of backwards fox-trot across the pavement—suspicion became certainty. The barman, as becomes a man plying his trade in the Ratcliff Highway, was made of stern stuff. He was no poltroon. As soon as he had managed to stop himself from pirouetting, he dabbed at his right cheek-bone in a delicate manner, soliloquised for a moment, and then dashed back into the bar. And it was after the door had swung to again behind him that the proceedings may have been said formally to have begun. What precisely was going on inside that bar I was still too enfeebled to go and see. It sounded like an earthquake, and no meagre earthquake at that. All the glassware in the world seemed to be smashing simultaneously, the populations of several cities were shouting in unison, and I could almost fancy that I saw the walls of the building shake and heave. And then somebody blew a police-whistle.