He went straight up the cul-de-sac and without any words at all hit the young man as hard as possible under the ear nearest to him.

There seems to have been a moment of amazed silence; the young man dropped the old one, who fled out into the lane, and struck back at Frank, who parried.  Simultaneously a woman screamed somewhere; and faces began to appear at windows and doors.

It is curious how the customs of the Middle Ages, as well as some of their oaths, seem to have descended to the ranks of the British working-man.  In the old days—­as also in prize-fights to-day—­it was quite usual to assail your adversary with insults as well as with blows.  This was done now.  The young man, with a torrent of imprecations, demanded who Frank thought he was, asked where he was coming to, required of society in general an explanation of a stranger’s interfering between a son and a qualified father.  There was a murmur of applause and dissent, and Frank answered, with a few harmless expletives such as he had now learned to employ as a sort of verbal disguise, that he did not care how many sons or fathers were in question, that he did not propose to see a certain kind of bully abuse an old man, and that he would be happy to take the old man’s place....

Then the battle was set.

Frank had learned to box in a certain small saloon in Market Street, Cambridge, and knew perfectly well how to take care of himself.  He received about half the force of one extremely hard blow just on his left cheek-bone before he got warmed to his work; but after that he did the giving and the loose-limbed young man the receiving, Frank was even scientific; he boxed in the American manner, crouching, with both arms half extended (and this seems to have entirely bewildered his adversary) and he made no effort to reach the face.  He just thumped away steadily below the spot where the ribs part, and where—­a doctor informs me—­a nerve-center, known as the solar plexus, is situated.  He revolved, too, with considerable agility, round his opponent, and gradually drew the battle nearer and nearer to the side lane outside.  He knew enough of slum-chivalry by now to be aware that if a sympathizer, or sycophant, of the young man happened to be present, he himself would quite possibly (if the friend happened to possess sufficient courage) suddenly collapse from a disabling blow on the back of the neck.  Also, he was not sure whether there was any wife in the question; and in this case it would be a poker, or a broken bottle, held dagger-wise, that he would have to meet.  And he wished therefore to have more room round him than the cul-de-sac afforded.

But there was no need for precaution.

The young man had begun to look rather sickly under the eyes and to hiccup three or four times in distressed manner; when suddenly the clamor round the fight ceased.  Frank was aware of a shrill old voice calling out something behind him; and the next instant, simultaneously with the dropping of his adversary’s hands, he himself was seized from behind by the arms, and, writhing, discerned is blue sleeve and a gloved hand holding him.