His spirit inspired me with great respect.  He seemed to have no strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked down; but, he would be up again in a moment, sponging himself or drinking out of the water-bottle, with the greatest satisfaction in seconding himself according to form, and then came at me with an air and a show that made me believe he really was going to do for me at last.  He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record that the more I hit him, the harder I hit him; but, he came up again and again and again, until at last he got a bad fall with the back of his head against the wall.  Even after that crisis in our affairs, he got up and turned round and round confusedly a few times, not knowing where I was; but finally went on his knees to his sponge and threw it up:  at the same time panting out, “That means you have won.”

He seemed so brave and innocent, that although I had not proposed the contest I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory.  Indeed, I go so far as to hope that I regarded myself while dressing, as a species of savage young wolf, or other wild beast.  However, I got dressed, darkly wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and I said, “Can I help you?” and he said “No thankee,” and I said “Good afternoon,” and he said “Same to you.”

When I got into the court-yard, I found Estella waiting with the keys.  But, she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as though something had happened to delight her.  Instead of going straight to the gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned me.

“Come here!  You may kiss me, if you like.”

I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me.  I think I would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek.  But, I felt that the kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was worth nothing.

What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what with the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home the light on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was gleaming against a black night-sky, and Joe’s furnace was flinging a path of fire across the road.

Chapter 12

My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentleman.  The more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young gentleman on his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the more certain it appeared that something would be done to me.  I felt that the pale young gentleman’s blood was on my head, and that the Law would avenge it.  Without having any definite idea of the penalties I had incurred, it was clear to me that village boys could not go stalking about the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into the studious youth of England, without laying themselves open to