Thompson, in all his carefully ordered life, had never fought.  He fought now as if his life depended upon it.  Each blow he gave and took brought to the surface a furious determination.  He was not conscious of real pain, although he knew that his lips were cut and bleeding, that his cheeks were bruised and cut where Tommy Ashe’s hard-knuckled fists landed with impressive force, that his heart pounded sickeningly against his ribs, and that every breath was a rasping gasp.  Nor was he conscious of pity when he saw that Tommy Ashe was in no better case.  It seemed fit and proper that they should struggle like that.  There was a strange sort of pleasure in it.  It seemed natural, as natural an act as he had ever performed.  The shock of his clenched fist driven with all his force against the other man’s body thrilled him, gave him a curious satisfaction.  And that satisfaction took on a keener edge when Ashe clinched and they fell to the earth a struggling, squirming heap—­for Thompson felt a tremendous power in his arms, in those arms covered with flat elastic bands of muscle hardened by weeks of axe-slinging, of heaving on heavy logs.  He wrapped his arms about Ashe and tried to crush him.

One trial of that fierce grip enlightened Tommy Ashe.  He broke loose from Thompson by a trick known to every man who has ever wrestled, and clawed away to his feet.  Thereafter he kept clear of grips.  Quick, with some skill at boxing, he could get home two blows to Thompson’s one.  But he could not down his man.  Nor could Thompson.  They struck and parried, circling and dodging, till their lungs were on fire, and neither had strength enough left to strike a telling blow.

The rage had gone out of them by then.  It had become a dogged struggle for mastery.  And failing that, there came a moment when they staggered apart and stood glaring at each other, choking for breath.  As they stood, Tommy Ashe spoke first.

“You’re a tough bird—­for a parson.”

He gasped the words.

With the dying out of that senseless fury a peculiar feeling of elation came to Thompson, as if he had proved himself upon a doubtful matter.  He was ready to go on.  But why?  That question urged itself upon him.  He recalled that he had struck the first blow.

“I think—­I started this, didn’t I?” he said.  “I’m willing to finish it, if you want to—­but isn’t it—­isn’t it rather foolish?”

“No end foolish.  Don’t think we’d ever finish,” Ashe said with a gleam of his old humor.  “Let’s call it a draw.  I feel a bit ashamed of myself by now.”

Somewhere, sometime, Mr. Thompson had heard that men who fought shook hands when the struggle was ended—­a little ceremony that served to restore the status quo.  He had not the least rancor against Tommy Ashe.  It had all seeped away in the blind fury of that clash.  He thrust out a hand upon which the knuckles were cut and bloody.  And the man upon whose countenance he had bruised those knuckles took it with a wry self-conscious smile.