In the van of all I caught sight of two figures—­one that I knew very well, towering, bareheaded, a hand’s-breadth above the throng; the other, something below the middle height, but shaggy, vast-chested, and double-jointed as a red Highland steer—­M’Diarmid of Trinity, glory of the Cambridge gymnasium, and “5” in the University eight.  They were not shouting like the rest, but hitting out straight and remorselessly; and before those two strong Promachi, townsman and navvy, peeler and special, went down like blades of corn.  Close at their shoulder I distinguished Lovell, his clear blue eyes lightening savagely; and stout Tom Lynton, a deeper flush on his honest face, hewing away with all the unscientific strength of his nervous arm.

But my two guards, very Abdiels in their duty, never let me go; on the contrary, one tightened his gripe on my throat suffocatingly, while the other, though I remained perfectly quiescent, kept giving me gentle hints to keep the peace with the end of his staff.  I was getting sick and dizzy, when something passed my cheek like the wind of a ball; there was a dull, crashing sound close at my ear; the grasp on my neck relaxed all at once; I felt something across my feet, and saw a dark blue mass, topped by the ruin of a shiny hat, lying there quite still; an arm was round my waist like the coil of a cable, and I heard Guy’s voice laughing loud,

“My dear Frank,” he said, as he dragged me away toward the inn, “the centre of a row, as usual. Que, diable, allait il faire dans cette bagarre?”

I hardly heard him, for my senses were still confused; but in thirty seconds I was under the archway of “The George.”  As the heroines of the Radcliffe romances say, “I turned to thank my preserver, but he was gone.”

When I recovered my breath, I went up to a balcony on the first floor and looked out.  The tide of the affray was surging gradually back into the wide open space before the inn, and very shortly this was filled with a chaos of furious faces and struggling arms.  The University were evidently recoiling, pressed back by the sheer weight of their opponents; but soon came a re-enforcement of grooms and stable-men, lightweights, active and wiry; and these, with their hunting-crops and heavy cutting-whips used remorselessly—­like Caesar’s legionaries, they struck only at the face—­once more re-established the balance of the battle.

Suddenly the melee seemed to converge to one point—­the mid-eddy, as it were, of the whirlpool; then came a lull, almost a hush; and then fifty strong arms, indiscriminately of town and gownsmen, were locked to keep the ground, while a storm of voices shouted for “A ring!”

In that impromptu arena two men stood face to face under the full glare of the gas-lamps—­one was Guy Livingstone; the other a denizen of the Potteries, yclept “Burn’s Big ’un,” who had selected B——­ as his training quarters, in preparation for his fight to come off in the ensuing week with the third best man in England for L100 a side.