right sort of son, anxious to push his
mother's shop where he saw a chance, and do it cheap; and those foreign
pigs, after a disappointment to their importer, might be had pretty
cheap, and were accounted tasty.

Skepsey's main thought was upon war: the man had discoursed of pigs.

He informed the man of his having heard from a scholar, that pigs had
been the cause of more bloody battles than any other animal.

How so? the pork-butcher asked, and said he was not much of a scholar,
and pigs might be provoking, but he had not heard they were a cause of
strife between man and man. For possession of them, Skepsey explained.
Oh! possession! Why, we've heard of bloody battles for the possession of
women! Men will fight for almost anything they care to get or call their
own, the pork-butcher said; and he praised Old England for avoiding war.
Skepsey nodded. How if war is forced on us? Then we fight. Suppose we are
not prepared?--We soon get that up. Skepsey requested him to state the
degree of resistance he might think he could bring against a pair of
skilful fists, in a place out of hearing of the police.

'Say, you!' said the pork-butcher, and sharply smiled, for he was a man
of size.

'I would give you two minutes,' rejoined Skepsey, eyeing him intently and
kindly: insomuch that it could be seen he was not in the conundrum vein.

'Rather short allowance, eh, master?' said the bigger man. 'Feel here';
he straightened out his arm and doubled it, raising a proud bridge of
muscle.

Skepsey performed the national homage to muscle.

'Twice that, would not help without the science,' he remarked, and let
his arm be gripped in turn.

The pork-butcher's throat sounded, as it were, commas and colons,
punctuations in his reflections, while he tightened fingers along the
iron lump. 'Stringy. You're a wiry one, no mistake.' It was encomium.
With the ingrained contempt of size for a smallness that has not yet
taught it the prostrating lesson, he said: 'Weight tells.'

'In a wrestle,' Skepsey admitted. 'Allow me to say, you would not touch
me.'

'And how do you know I'm not a trifle handy with the maulers myself?'

'You will pardon me for saying, it would be worse for you if you were.'

The pork-butcher was flung backward. 'Are you a Professor, may I
inquire?'

Skepsey rejected the title. 'I can engage to teach young men, upon a
proper observance of first principles.'

'They be hanged!' cried the ruffled pork-butcher. 'Ou