“Do it, and see!” returns Ripton, rocking on his feet, and breathing quick.

With a gravity of which only boys and other barbarians are capable, Richard went through the entire number, stressing the epithet to increase the defiance and avoid monotony, as he progressed, while Ripton bobbed his head every time in assent, as it were, to his comrade’s accuracy, and as a record for his profound humiliation.  The dog they had with them gazed at the extraordinary performance with interrogating wags of the tail.

Twenty times, duly and deliberately, Richard repeated the obnoxious word.

At the twentieth solemn iteration of Ripton’s capital shortcoming, Ripton delivered a smart back-hander on Richard’s mouth, and squared precipitately; perhaps sorry when the deed was done, for he was a kind-hearted lad, and as Richard simply bowed in acknowledgment of the blow he thought he had gone too far.  He did not know the young gentleman he was dealing with.  Richard was extremely cool.

“Shall we fight here?” he said.

“Anywhere you like,” replied Ripton.

“A little more into the wood, I think.  We may be interrupted.”  And Richard led the way with a courteous reserve that somewhat chilled Ripton’s ardour for the contest.  On the skirts of the wood, Richard threw off his jacket and waistcoat, and, quite collected, waited for Ripton to do the same.  The latter boy was flushed and restless; older and broader, but not so tight-limbed and well-set.  The Gods, sole witnesses of their battle, betted dead against him.  Richard had mounted the white cockade of the Feverels, and there was a look in him that asked for tough work to extinguish.  His brows, slightly lined upward at the temples, converging to a knot about the well-set straight nose; his full grey eyes, open nostrils, and planted feet, and a gentlemanly air of calm and alertness, formed a spirited picture of a young combatant.  As for Ripton, he was all abroad, and fought in school-boy style—­that is, he rushed at the foe head foremost, and struck like a windmill.  He was a lumpy boy.  When he did hit, he made himself felt; but he was at the mercy of science.  To see him come dashing in, blinking and puffing and whirling his arms abroad while the felling blow went straight between them, you perceived that he was fighting a fight of desperation, and knew it.  For the dreaded alternative glared him in the face that, if he yielded, he must look like what he had been twenty times calumniously called; and he would die rather than yield, and swing his windmill till he dropped.  Poor boy! he dropped frequently.  The gallant fellow fought for appearances, and down he went.  The Gods favour one of two parties.  Prince Turnus was a noble youth; but he had not Pallas at his elbow.  Ripton was a capital boy; he had no science.  He could not prove he was not a fool!  When one comes to think of it, Ripton did choose the only possible way, and we should all of us have considerable difficulty in proving the negative by any other.  Ripton came on the unerring fist again and again; and if it was true, as he said in short colloquial gasps, that he required as much beating as an egg to be beaten thoroughly, a fortunate interruption alone saved our friend from resembling that substance.  The boys heard summoning voices, and beheld Mr. Morton of Poer Hall and Austin Wentworth stepping towards them.