Meadows rang the bell.  “Harness the mare to the four-wheeled chaise.  You know what to do, Crawley.”

“Well, I can guess.”

“But first get him told that I am always at Grassmere at six o’clock.”

“But you won’t go there this evening, of course.”

“Why not?”

“Aren’t you afraid he—­”

“Afraid of Will Fielding?  Why, you have never looked at me.  I do notice your eyes are always on the ground.  Crawley, when I was eighteen, one evening (it was harvest home, and all the folk had drunk their wit and manners out) I found a farmer’s wife in a lane, hemmed in by three great ignorant brutes that were for kissing her, or some nonsense, and she crying help and murder and ready to faint with fright.  It was a decent woman, and a neighbor, so I interfered as thus:  I knocked the first fellow senseless on his back with a blow before they knew of me, and then the three were two.  I fought the two, giving and taking for full ten minutes, and then I got a chance and one went down.  I put my foot on his neck and kept him down for all he could do, and over his body I fought the best man of the lot, and thrashed him so that his whole mug was like a ball of beetroot.  When he was quite sick he ran one way, and t’other got up roaring and ran another, and they had to send a hurdle for No. 1.  Dame Fielding gave me of her own accord what all the row was about, and more than one, and hearty ones, too, I assure you, and had me in to supper, and told her man, and he shook my hand a good one.”

“Why, sir, you don’t mean to say the woman you fought for was Mrs. Fielding.”

“But I tell you it was, and I had those two boys on my knee, two chubby toads, pulling at my curly hair—! why do I talk of these things?  Oh, I remember, it was to show you I am not a man that can be bullied.  I am a much better man than I was at eighteen.  I won’t be married in a black eye if I can help it.  But, when I am once married, here I stand against all comers, and if you hear them grumble or threaten you, tell them that any Sunday afternoon, when there is nothing better to be done, I’ll throw my cap into the ring and fight all the Fieldings that ever were pupped, one down another come on.”  Then turning quite cool and contemptuous all in a moment, he said, “These are words, and we have work on hand;” and, even as he spoke, he strode from the room pattered after by Crawley.

At six o’clock Meadows and Susan were walking arm in arm in the garden.  Presently they saw a man advancing toward them, with his right hand behind him.  “Why, it is Will Fielding,” cried Susan, “come to thank you.”

“I think not, by the look of him,” replied Meadows, coolly.

“Susan, will you be so good as to take your hand from that man’s arm.  I have got a word to say to him.”

Susan did more than requested, seeing at once that mischief was coming.  She clung to William’s right arm, and while he ground his teeth with ineffectual rage, for she was strong, as her sex are strong, for half a minute, and to throw her off he must have been much rougher with her than he chose to be, three men came behind unobserved by all but Meadows, and captured him on the old judgment.  And, Crawley having represented him as a violent man, they literally laid the grasp of the law on him.