one I knew of, my nerves were quickly at the right pitch.  Brushing some spikes of furze off my hands, I prepared for it.  A cry rose.  My impression seemed to be all backward, travelling up to me a moment or two behind time.  I recognised a strange tongue in the cry, but too late that it was Romany to answer it.  Instantly a voice was audible above the noisy wind:  ’I spot him.’  Then began some good and fair fighting.  I got my footing on grass, and liked the work.  The fellow facing me was unmistakably gipsy-build.  I, too, had length of arm, and a disposition to use it by hitting straight out, with footing firm, instead of dodging and capering, which told in my favour, and is decidedly the best display of the noble art on a dark night.

My dancer went over as neatly as I had preceded him; and therewith I considered enough was done for vengeance.  The thrill of a salmon on the gut is known to give a savage satisfaction to our original nature; it is but an extension and attenuation of the hearty contentment springing from a thorough delivery of the fist upon the prominent features of an assailant that yields to it perforce.  Even when you receive such perfect blows you are half satisfied.  Feeling conqueror, my wrath was soothed; I bent to have a look at my ruffian, and ask him what cause of complaint gipsies camping on Durstan could find against Riversley.  A sharp stroke on the side of my neck sent me across his body.  He bit viciously.  In pain and desperation I flew at another of the tawny devils.  They multiplied.  I took to my heels; but this was the vainest of stratagems, they beat me in nimbleness.  Four of them were round me when I wheeled breathless to take my chance at fighting the odds.  Fiery men have not much notion of chivalry:  gipsies the least of all.  They yelled disdain of my summons to them to come on one by one:  ’Now they had caught me, now they would pay me, now they would pound me; and, standing at four corners, they commended me to think of becoming a jelly.  Four though they were, they kept their positions; they left it to me to rush in for a close; the hinder ones held out of arms’ reach so long as I was disengaged.  I had perpetually to shift my front, thinking—­Oh, for a stick! any stout bit of timber!  My fists ached, and a repetition of nasty dull knocks on back and neck, slogging thumps dealt by men getting to make sure of me, shattered my breathing.

I cried out for a pause, offered to take a couple of them at a time:  I challenged three-the fourth to bide.  I was now the dancer:  left, right, and roundabout I had to swing, half-stunned, half-strangled with gorge.  Those terrible blows in the back did the mischief.  Sickness threatened to undermine me.  Boxers have breathing-time:  I had none.  Stiff and sick, I tried to run; I tottered, I stood to be knocked down, I dropped like a log-careless of life.  But I smelt earth keenly, and the damp grass and the devil’s play of their feet on my chin, chest, and thighs, revived a fit of wrath