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you shouldn't fight a pretty mill."

      "How long can you stop with me, 'Frosty'?" asked Mr. Shillabeer.

      "Well, if there was a few yellow-boys[#] in it, I might go as far as three weeks. I ought to see Tom King about something of the greatest importance before long; but I can write it. If these chaps will come to the scratch in three weeks, I'll stop. And they both look hard and healthy; and as neither of 'em know anything, it may be a short fight."

      [#] Sovereigns.

      Much talk followed and, in the midst, the visitor rose, put down his pipe and left the bar.

      Then up spoke Ernest Maunder in the majesty of the law.

      "I warn you, souls," he said, "that I can't countenance this. If there's to be fighting, you've got me against you, and to-morrow I shall lay information with the Justice of the Peace and get a warrant out."

      "I hope you'll mind your own business," said Crocker, warmly. "The man who spoils sport when Bowden and me meet, is like to get spoilt himself."

      "You won't frighten me," returned Ernest. "As a common man I'd give you best, Bartley; but in my blue and with right my side, you'll find me an ugly customer, I warn you. Bowden here was daring me to be up and doing a bit ago. Well, you'll soon see how 'tis if you try to plan to break the law and fight a prize fight in this parish! I know my business, and that you'll find."

      "And I'm with you," declared Mr. Moses. "Have no fear, Maunder. The Church and the State are both o' your side, and let vicar but get wind of this and he'll--"

      "You keep out of it, Moses," said Mr. Shillabeer, warmly. "We be very good friends and long may we remain so; but stick to your last, shoemaker, and if these full-grown men be pleased to settle their difference in the fine old way, 'tis very churlish in you to oppose it."

      "Well said, 'Dumpling,'" shouted a young, odd-looking, hairy man with the uneuphonious name of Screech; "if Moses here don't like fair play and nature's weapons, let him keep out of it; but if he tries to interfere, never a boot do he make for me again."

      "Nor yet for me," cried Bowden. "You'll do well to go back on that, Mr. Moses, and keep away from the subject."

      "Nor yet for me," echoed Timothy Mattacott, firmly. "I'm Maunder's friend, as you all know, and hope to remain so. But if there's to be the glad chance of a proper prize fight in this neighbourhood, I'm for it heart and soul."

      Mr. Fogo had returned and heard some of this conversation.

      "If the gentleman's a Jew," he said, "he ought to take kindly to the sport. Some of the best boys as ever threw a beaver into the Ring were Israelites--only to name Mendoza and Dutch Sam and Barney Aaron, 'the Star of the East.'"

      "I'm not a Jew," said Mr. Moses, "though I don't blame you for thinking so."

      "Not with that name?"

      "Not at all. My people are Devon all through."

      "Well," said Fogo, "my humble custom is to make hay while the sun shines. We Cockney blokes learn that quite as quick as you Johnny Raws from the plough-tail; and as there's a fight in the air, I'll be so bold as to sell a few of my verses to them brave blades that would like to see what fighting was once."

      On his arm he carried fifty broadsheets, and now the old sportsman began to distribute them.

      "Twopence each, gentlemen--all true and partickler with the names of the Fancy present: Mr. Jackson, Mr. Gully, Tom Cribb, Jem Burn, Tom Spring, and all the old originals. The poems go from the first fight that I ever saw between Hen Pearce, 'the Game Chicken,' and that poor, old, one-eyed lion, Jem Belcher, in 1805; to the great mill between Mr. Sayers and Mr. Heenan a year ago, when our man fought the Yankee with one hand and jolly near beat him at that. All out of my own head, gentlemen, and only twopence each!"

      Mr. Fogo distributed his warlike verses in every direction; then when not a poem remained, he began to collect them again. But the company proved in very vein for these lays of blood. Both the future combatants made several purchases; Mr. Snell also patronised the poet, while Mattacott, Screech, and even Mr. Maunder himself, became possessed of 'Frosty-face's' sanguine chronicles.

      It being now closing time, the storm-laden air was cleared; the noisy company, with laughter and repetition of racy couplets from Mr. Fogo's muse, retired, and at last the two old friends were left alone. Shillabeer shut up his bar and locked the house; 'Frosty' counted the contents of his pocket and gathered up the poems still unsold.

      "I ought to share the booty with you, 'Dumpling,'" he said, but his host scorned the thought.

      "Hope you'll be sold out long afore you go," he returned. "And as to sharing, that's nonsense. You're a great man, and if you be going to stop along of me for three weeks, you'll bring a lot of custom, for the people will come from far and near to see you."

      "Of course if you put it that way, I say no more, because you know best," declared Fogo.

      Presently they sat together over a final pipe.

      "Now talk of the wife," said Reuben.

      Mr. Fogo obeyed, cast his acute countenance into a mould of melancholy, appeared to draw a film over his piercing eyes, ceased joyously to rattle the money in his breeches pocket, and shook his head sadly once or twice to catch the spirit of the theme.

      "The biggest and the best woman I ever saw, or ever hope to see," he began. "I picture her now--as a young, gay creature in her father's shop at the corner of the Dials. Rabbits and caveys and birds he sold and him a sportsman to the marrow. Thirteen stone in her maiden days, they used to say, and very nearly six feet high--the wonder and the joy of the male sex. And 'twas left for you to win that rare female. And you did; and you was the envied of London, 'Dumpling'--the envied of London."

      Mr. Shillabeer nodded, sighed heavily, and licked his lips at these picturesque words.

      "It brings her back--so large as life--to hear you tell about her. 'Twas the weight she put on after marriage that killed her, 'Frosty,'" he said. "You must see her grave in the burying-ground."

      "And take my hat off to it--so I will."

      "There's room for me beside her, come my turn, Fogo."

      "Quite right--perfectly right. You couldn't wait for the trump of Doom beside a better woman."

      Reuben next gave all details of his wife's last illness, and the subject occupied him until midnight when conversation drifted from Mrs. Shillabeer to other matters. They talked until the peat fire sank to a red eye and the air grew cold. Then conversation waned and both heroes began to grow sleepy.

      Mr. Shillabeer rose first and concluded the wide survey.

      "Ah, 'Frosty,' the days we've seen!" he said.

      "I'm with you," answered the poet, also rising. "'Tis all summed up in that word and couldn't be put better,--'The days we've seen!'"

      CHAPTER X

      SOME INTERVIEWS

      Those from whom it was most desired to keep all information of the coming fight were the first to hear of it. Mr. Moses told Mr. Merle, the vicar, and Mr. Merle resented the news bitterly. He decided, indeed, that such a proceeding would disgrace the parish.

      "We might as well revive the horrors of our bull-ring," he said. "It cannot and must not be."

      The good man referred to a considerable tract of ground beneath the southern wall of the churchyard--a region known as the 'bull-ring' and authentically connected with obsolete sports.

      Ernest Maunder was most unfortunate in the ally that he had expected to win. Sir Guy Flamank, the lord of the manor, though enrolled on the Commission of the Peace, was before all else a sportsman, as he declared at every opportunity. Somehow this gentleman, by means mysteriously hidden, became aware of the little matter in hand on the very morning after the arrangement, and though Ernest called at the Manor House, he found the Justice unable to see him. Thrice he was thus evaded, and when once he met Sir Guy on horseback, Mr. Maunder could

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