ome breathless impotent rush--of a sudden blindness
followed by quick flashes of intolerable light--of a deadly faintness,
from which he was roused by sharp pangs--here--there--everywhere; and
then all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, huddled
up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over him with a
countenance as dark and livid as Lara himself might have bent over the
fallen Otho. For Randal Leslie was not one who, by impulse and nature,
subscribed to the noble English maxim--"Never hit a foe when he is
down;" and it cost him a strong if brief self-struggle, not to set his
heel on that prostrate form. It was the mind, not the heart that subdued
the savage within him, as, muttering something inwardly--certainly not
Christian forgiveness--the victor turned gloomily away.

CHAPTER IV.

Just at that precise moment, who should appear but Mr. Stirn! For, in
fact, being extremely anxious to get Lenny into disgrace, he had hoped
that he should have found the young villager had shirked the commission
intrusted to him; and the Right-hand Man had slily come back, to see if
that amiable expectation were realized. He now beheld Lenny rising with
some difficulty--still panting hard--and with hysterical sounds akin to
what is vulgarly called blubbering--his fine new waistcoat sprinkled
with his own blood which flowed from his nose--nose that seemed to Lenny
Fairfield's feelings to be a nose no more, but a swollen, gigantic,
mountainous Slawkenbergian excrescence,--in fact, he felt all nose!
Turning aghast from this spectacle, Mr. Stirn surveyed, with no more
respect than Lenny had manifested, the stranger boy, who had again
seated himself on the stocks (whether to recover his breath, or whether
to show that his victory was consummated, and that he was in his rights
of possession). "Hollo," said Mr. Stirn, "what is all this?--what's the
matter, Lenny, you blockhead?"

"He _will_ sit there," answered Lenny, in broken gasps, "and he has beat
me because I would not let him; but I doesn't mind that," added the
villager, trying hard to suppress his tears, "and I'm ready again for
him--that I am."

"And what do you do, lolloping there on them blessed stocks?"

"Looking at the landscape; out of my light, man."

This tone instantly inspired Mr. Stirn with misgivings: it was a tone so
disrespectful to him that he was seized with involuntary respect: who
but a gentleman could speak so to Mr. Stirn?

"And may