was, as a matter of course, an immediate call for a supply of those functionaries.  In about three minutes three policemen, assisted by six porters, had captured our poor friend Johnny; but this had not been done quick enough for Crosbie’s purposes.  The bystanders, taken by surprise, had allowed the combatants to fall back upon Mr Smith’s book-stall, and there Eames laid his foe prostrate among the newspapers, falling himself into the yellow shilling-novel depot by the over fury of his own energy; but as he fell, he contrived to lodge one blow with his fist in Crosbie’s right eye,—­one telling blow; and Crosbie had, to all intents and purposes, been thrashed.

“Con-founded scoundrel, rascal, blackguard!” shouted Johnny, with what remnants of voice were left to him, as the police dragged him off.  “If you only knew—­what he’s—­done.”  But in the meantime the policemen held him fast.

As a matter of course the first burst of public sympathy went with Crosbie.  He had been assaulted, and the assault had come from Eames.  In the British bosom there is so firm a love of well-constituted order, that these facts alone were sufficient to bring twenty knights to the assistance of the three policemen and the six porters; so that for Eames, even had he desired it, there was no possible chance of escape.  But he did not desire it.  One only sorrow consumed him at present.  He had, as he felt, attacked Crosbie, but had attacked him in vain.  He had had his opportunity, and had misused it.  He was perfectly unconscious of that happy blow, and was in absolute ignorance of the great fact that his enemy’s eye was already swollen and closed, and that in another hour it would be as black as his hat.

“He is a con-founded rascal!” ejaculated Eames, as the policemen and porters hauled him about.  “You don’t know what he’s done.”

“No, we don’t,” said the senior constable; “but we know what you have done.  I say, Bushers, where’s that gentleman?  He’d better come along with us.”

Crosbie had been picked up from among the newspapers by another policeman and two or three other porters, and was attended also by the guard of the train, who knew him, and knew that he had come up from Courcy Castle.  Three or four hangers-on were standing also around him, together with a benevolent medical man who was proposing to him an immediate application of leeches.  If he could have done as he wished, he would have gone his way quietly, allowing Eames to do the same.  A great evil had befallen him, but he could in no way mitigate that evil by taking the law of the man who had attacked him.  To have the thing as little talked about as possible should be his endeavour.  What though he should have Eames locked up and fined, and scolded by a police magistrate?  That would not in any degree lessen his calamity.  If he could have parried the attack, and got the better of his foe; if he could have administered the black eye instead of receiving it, then indeed he could have laughed the matter off at his club, and his original crime would have been somewhat glozed over by his success in arms.  But such good fortune had not been his.  He was forced, however, on the moment to decide as to what he would do.