White and black with passion he wheeled round on Isaac with a fierce snarl, and lifting his stick discharged a furious blow at his head.

Fortunately for Isaac wood encountered leather instead of gray hairs.

Attracted by the raised voices, and unseen in their frenzy by either of these antagonists, young George Fielding had drawn near them.  He had, luckily, a stout pig-whip in his hand, and by an adroit turn of his muscular wrist he parried a blow that would have stopped the old Jew’s eloquence perhaps forever.  As it was, the corn-factor’s stick cut like a razor through the air, and made a most musical whirr within a foot of the Jew’s ear.  The basilisk look of venom and vengeance he instantly shot back amounted to a stab.

“Not if I know it,” said George.  And he stood cool and erect with a calm manly air of defiance between the two belligerents.  While the stick and the whip still remained in contact, Meadows glared at Isaac’s champion with surprise and wrath, and a sort of half fear half wonder that this of all men in the world should be the one to cross weapons with and thwart him.  “You are joking, Master Meadows,” said George coolly.  “Why the man is twice your age, and nothing in his hand but his fist.  Who are ye, old man, and what d’ye want?  It’s you for cursing, anyway.”

“He insults me,” cried Meadows, “because I won’t have him for a tenant against my will.  Who is he?  A villainous old Jew.”

“Yes, young man,” said the other, sadly, “I am Isaac Levi, a Jew.  And what is your religion” (he turned upon Meadows)?  “It never came out of Judea in any name or shape.  D’ye call yourself a heathen?  Ye lie, ye cur; the heathen were not without starlight from heaven; they respected sorrow and gray hairs.”

“You shall smart for this.  I’ll show you what my religion is,” said Meadows, inadvertent with passion, and the corn-factor’s fingers grasped his stick convulsively.

“Don’t you be so aggravating, old man,” said the good-natured George, “and you, Mr. Meadows, should know how to make light of an old man’s tongue; why it’s like a woman’s, it’s all he has got to hit with; leastways you mustn’t lift hand to him on my premises, or you will have to settle with me first; and I don’t think that would suit your book or any man’s for a mile or two round about Farnborough,” said George with his little Berkshire drawl.

“He!” shrieked Isaac, “he dare not! see! see!” and he pointed nearly into the man’s eye, “he doesn’t look you in the face.  Any soul that has read men from east to west can see lion in your eye, young man, and cowardly wolf in his.”

“Lady-day!  Lady-day!” snorted Meadows, who was now shaking with suppressed rage.

“Ah!” cried Isaac, and he turned white and quivered in his turn.

“Lady-day!” said George, uneasily, “Confound Lady-day, and every day of the sort—­there, don’t you be so spiteful, old man—­why if he isn’t all of a tremble.  Poor old man.”  He went to his own door, and called “Sarah!”