“Thank you,” said the young man, handing over his pony.

Joses snorted.

“Call yourself a woman!” he cried.

“I’m all right,” answered the girl, seating herself critically on a mound, the pony in one hand, the dog in the other.  “Don’t hit him over the heart,” she advised out of some experience of race-course scraps.  “There might be trouble.”

“I sha’n’t hit him at all,” replied the young man.  He seized the fat man by the shoulder and spun him round.  “I shall—­shake him, and—­punt him.”

The girl did not know what punting meant, but it sounded good and was not so bad to watch.

Silver was applying his knee to his victim with precision and power.  The fat man’s teeth seemed to rattle under the pounding shocks.  The words came joggling out of him, and they were not pretty words.  He struck backward with his arms and feet, wriggling to get his plump shoulders free; but he was helpless as a baby in the arms of a nurse.

Silver was strong.  Joses was right in that if in nothing else.

“He’s killing me!” he gasped.  “Fetch the coastguard!”

“No, thank you,” said the girl.

The young man loosed his prey at last, and sent him spinning forward, projecting him with a kick.

Joses fell on his face, and stayed there fumbling, while he vomited oaths.

“Look out!” cried the girl sharply.  “He’s got a knife, and he’ll use it.”

She was right.  Joses was busy with that wooden-handled sheath-knife of his.

Silver took a step forward.

“Ah, then!—­would you?” he scolded, and hit the other a tap over the wrist with the handle of his hunting crop.

Joses yelped and dropped the knife.

Then he scrambled to his feet, wringing his hand.

The brown of his face had turned a dirty livid.

“I see what it is!” he cried.  “Assignation.  And I spoiled the sport—­what!  You and the dandy toff.

          Him and me,
          Beside the sea.

Quite unintentional, I assure you!”

He bowed, cackling horribly.

Silver looked ugly.

“Now then!” he said, and advanced a pace.

The girl put a staying hand upon him; and the tout shambled away toward the Gap, muttering to himself.

Silver turned to his companion.  He was breathing deep, but outwardly unmoved.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.  “He knocked Billy Bluff out, but he didn’t touch me.  Hold your paw, Bill!  It’s nothing much.  I shall put him on a wet bandage soaked in borax when I get home.”

A sound of hand-clapping and hoarse laughter ascended to them from the
Gap.

Joses had slipped Ragamuffin’s reins over the post, and was clapping his hands.  Then he took up a pebble and threw it at the roan.  The old pony went off at a gallop and with trailing reins.