Great English names of young days, before the wintry shadow of the Law had blighted them, received their withered laurels.  Emulous boys were in the heroic posture.  Good! sparring does no hurt:  Skepsey seized a likely lad, Dartrey another.  Nature created the Ring for them.  Now then, arms and head well up, chest hearty, shoulders down, out with the right fist, just below the level of the chin; out with the left fist farther, right out, except for that bit of curve; so, and draw it slightly back for wary-pussy at the spring.  Firm you stand, feeling the muscles of both legs, left half a pace ahead, right planted, both stringy.  None of your milk-pail looks; show us jaw, you bulldogs.  Now then, left from the shoulder, straight at right of head.—­Good, and alacrity called on vigour in Skepsey’s pupil; Dartrey’s had the fist on his mouth before he could parry right arm up.  ‘Foul blow!’ Dartrey cried.  Skepsey vowed to the contrary.  Dartrey reiterated his charge.  Skepsey was a figure of negation, gesticulating and protesting.  Dartrey appealed tempestuously to the Ring; Skepsey likewise, in a tone of injury.  He addressed a remonstrance to Captain Dartrey.

‘Hang your captain, sir!  I call you a coward; come on,’ said the resolute gentleman, already in ripe form for the attack.  His blue eyes were like the springing sunrise over ridges of the seas; and Skepsey jumped to his meaning.

Boys and men were spectators of a real scientific set-to, a lovely show.  They were half puzzled, it seemed so deadly.  And the little one got in his blows at the gentleman, who had to be hopping.  Only, the worse the gentleman caught it, the friendlier his countenance became.  That was the wonder, and that gave them the key.  But it was deliciously near to the real thing.

Dartrey and Skepsey shook hands.

’And now, you fellows, you’re to know, that this is one of the champions; and you take your lesson from him and thank him,’ Dartrey said, as he turned on his heel to strike and greet the flow from the house.

‘Dartrey come!’ Victor, Fenellan, Colney, had him by the hand in turn.  Pure sweetness of suddenly awakened joy sat in Nataly’s eyes as she swam to welcome him, Nesta moved a step, seemed hesitating, and she tripped forward.  ‘Dear Captain Dartrey!’

He did not say:  ‘But what a change in you!’

‘It is blue-butterfly, all the same,’ Nataly spoke to his look.

Victor hurriedly pronounced the formal introduction between the Hon. Dudley Sowerby and Captain Dartrey Fenellan.  The bronze face and the milky bowed to one another ceremoniously; the latter faintly flushing.

‘So here you are at last,’ Victor said.  ‘You stay with us.’

’To-morrow or later, if you’ll have me.  I go down to my people to-night.’

‘But you stay in England now?’ Nataly’s voice wavered on the question.

’There’s a chance of my being off to Upper Burmah before the week’s ended.’