at that time much affected by the fancy, and they were armed with horse-whips, silver-mounted, and each bearing the P.C. monogram.  Did any one, be it East End rough or West End patrician, intrude within the outer ropes, this corp of guardians neither argued nor expostulated, but they fell upon the offender and laced him with their whips until he escaped back out of the forbidden ground.  Even with so formidable a guard and such fierce measures, the beaters-out, who had to check the forward heaves of a maddened, straining crowd, were often as exhausted at the end of a fight as the principals themselves.  In the mean time they formed up in a line of sentinels, presenting under their row of white hats every type of fighting face, from the fresh boyish countenances of Tom Belcher, Jones, and the other younger recruits, to the scarred and mutilated visages of the veteran bruisers.

Whilst the business of the fixing of the stakes and the fastening of the ropes was going forward, I from my place of vantage could hear the talk of the crowd behind me, the front two rows of which were lying upon the grass, the next two kneeling, and the others standing in serried ranks all up the side of the gently sloping hill, so that each line could just see over the shoulders of that which was in front.  There were several, and those amongst the most experienced, who took the gloomiest view of Harrison’s chances, and it made my heart heavy to overhear them.

“It’s the old story over again,” said one.  “They won’t bear in mind that youth will be served.  They only learn wisdom when it’s knocked into them.”

“Ay, ay,” responded another.  “That’s how Jack Slack thrashed Boughton, and I myself saw Hooper, the tinman, beat to pieces by the fighting oilman.  They all come to it in time, and now it’s Harrison’s turn.”

“Don’t you be so sure about that!” cried a third.  “I’ve seen Jack Harrison fight five times, and I never yet saw him have the worse of it.  He’s a slaughterer, and so I tell you.”

“He was, you mean.”

“Well, I don’t see no such difference as all that comes to, and I’m putting ten guineas on my opinion.”

“Why,” said a loud, consequential man from immediately behind me, speaking with a broad western burr, “vrom what I’ve zeen of this young Gloucester lad, I doan’t think Harrison could have stood bevore him for ten rounds when he vas in his prime.  I vas coming up in the Bristol coach yesterday, and the guard he told me that he had vifteen thousand pound in hard gold in the boot that had been zent up to back our man.”

“They’ll be in luck if they see their money again,” said another.  “Harrison’s no lady’s-maid fighter, and he’s blood to the bone.  He’d have a shy at it if his man was as big as Carlton House.”

“Tut,” answered the west-countryman.  “It’s only in Bristol and Gloucester that you can get men to beat Bristol and Gloucester.”

“It’s like your damned himpudence to say so,” said an angry voice from the throng behind him.  “There are six men in London that would hengage to walk round the best twelve that hever came from the west.”