singular
attitude, with one arm out, and the other across his chest, looking at
me with a curious smile. For myself, I knew nothing of the methods of
fighting which these people have, but on horse or on foot, with arms or
without them, I am always ready to take my own part. You understand that
a soldier cannot always choose his own methods, and that it is time to
howl when you are living among wolves. I rushed at him, therefore, with
a warlike shout, and kicked him with both my feet. At the same moment my
heels flew into the air, I saw as many flashes as at Austerlitz, and the
back of my head came down with a crash upon a stone. After that I can
remember nothing more.

When I came to myself I was lying upon a truckle-bed, in a bare,
half-furnished room. My head was ringing like a bell, and when I put up
my hand, there was a lump like a walnut over one of my eyes. My nose was
full of a pungent smell, and I soon found that a strip of paper soaked
in vinegar was fastened across my brow. At the other end of the room
this terrible little man was sitting with his knee bare, and his
elderly companion was rubbing it with some liniment. The latter seemed
to be in the worst of tempers, and he kept up a continual scolding,
which the other listened to with a gloomy face.

'Never heard tell of such a thing in my life,' he was saying. 'In
training for a month with all the weight of it on my shoulders, and then
when I get you as fit as a trout, and within two days of fighting the
likeliest man on the list, you let yourself into a by-battle with a
foreigner.'

'There, there! Stow your gab!' said the other, sulkily. 'You're a very
good trainer, Jim, but you'd be better with less jaw.'

'I should think it was time to jaw,' the elderly man answered. 'If this
knee don't get well before next Wednesday, they'll have it that you
fought a cross, and a pretty job you'll have next time you look for a
backer.'

'Fought a cross!' growled the other. 'I've won nineteen battles, and no
man ever so much as dared to say the word "cross" in my hearin'. How the
deuce was I to get out of it when the cove wanted the very clothes off
my back?'

'Tut, man; you knew that the beak and the guards were within a mile of
you. You could have set them on to him as well then as now. You'd have
got your clothes back again all right.'

'Well, strike me!' said the Bustler. 'I don't often break my trainin',
but when it comes to givin' up my clothes to a Frenchy