“Double your two to one?” says Groove to Rattle, note-book in hand.

“Stop a bit,” says the hero, looking uncomfortably at Williams, who is puffing away on his second’s knee, winded enough, but little the worse in any other way.

After another round the slogger too seems to see that he can’t go in and win right off, and has met his match or thereabouts.  So he too begins to use his head and tries to make Tom lose patience and come in before his time.  And so the fight sways on, now one, and now the other, getting a trifling pull.

Tom’s face begins to look very one-sided—­there are little queer bumps on his forehead, and his mouth is bleeding; but East keeps the wet sponge going so scientifically, that he comes up looking as fresh and bright as ever.  Williams is only slightly marked in the face, but by the nervous movement of his elbows you can see that Tom’s body blows are telling.  In fact, half the vice of the slogger’s hitting is neutralized, for he daren’t lunge out freely for fear of exposing his sides.  It is too interesting by this time for much shouting, and the whole ring is very quiet.

“All right, Tommy,” whispers East; “hold on’s the horse that’s to win.  We’ve got the last.  Keep your head, old boy.”

But where is Arthur all this time?  Words cannot paint the poor little fellow’s distress.  He couldn’t muster courage to come up to the ring, but wandered up and down from the great fives’-court to the corner of the chapel rails, now trying to make up his mind to throw himself between them, and try to stop them; then thinking of running in and telling Mary, the matron, who he knew would instantly report it to the doctor.  The stories he had heard of men being killed in prize-fights rose up horribly before him.

Once only, when the shouts of “Well done, Brown!” “Huzza for the school-house!” rose higher than ever, he ventured up to the ring, thinking the victory was won.  Catching sight of Tom’s face in the state I have described, all fear of consequences vanishing out of his mind, he rushed straight off to the matron’s room, beseeching her to get the fight stopped, or he should die.

But it’s time for us to get back to the close.  What is this fierce tumult and confusion?  The ring is broken, and high and angry words are being bandied about; “It’s all fair,”—­“It isn’t”—­“No hugging”:  the fight is stopped.  The combatants, however, sit there quietly, tended by their seconds, while their adherents wrangle in the middle.  East can’t help shouting challenges to two or three of the other side, though he never leaves Tom for a moment, and plies the sponges as fast as ever.

The fact is, that at the end of the last round, Tom seeing a good opening, had closed with his opponent, and after a moment’s struggle had thrown him heavily, by the help of the fall he had learned from his village rival in the vale of White Horse.  Williams hadn’t the ghost of a chance with Tom at wrestling; and the conviction broke at once on the slogger faction, that if this were allowed their man must be licked.  There was a strong feeling in the school against catching hold and throwing, though it was generally ruled all fair within certain limits; so the ring was broken and the fight stopped.