as hard as possible under the ear nearest to him.

There seems to have been a moment of amazed silence; the young man
dropped the old one, who fled out into the lane, and struck back at
Frank, who parried. Simultaneously a woman screamed somewhere; and faces
began to appear at windows and doors.

It is curious how the customs of the Middle Ages, as well as some of
their oaths, seem to have descended to the ranks of the British
working-man. In the old days--as also in prize-fights to-day--it was
quite usual to assail your adversary with insults as well as with blows.
This was done now. The young man, with a torrent of imprecations,
demanded who Frank thought he was, asked where he was coming to,
required of society in general an explanation of a stranger's
interfering between a son and a qualified father. There was a murmur of
applause and dissent, and Frank answered, with a few harmless expletives
such as he had now learned to employ as a sort of verbal disguise, that
he did not care how many sons or fathers were in question, that he did
not propose to see a certain kind of bully abuse an old man, and that he
would be happy to take the old man's place....

Then the battle was set.

Frank had learned to box in a certain small saloon in Market Street,
Cambridge, and knew perfectly well how to take care of himself. He
received about half the force of one extremely hard blow just on his
left cheek-bone before he got warmed to his work; but after that he did
the giving and the loose-limbed young man the receiving, Frank was even
scientific; he boxed in the American manner, crouching, with both arms
half extended (and this seems to have entirely bewildered his adversary)
and he made no effort to reach the face. He just thumped away steadily
below the spot where the ribs part, and where--a doctor informs me--a
nerve-center, known as the _solar plexus_, is situated. He revolved,
too, with considerable agility, round his opponent, and gradually drew
the battle nearer and nearer to the side lane outside. He knew enough of
slum-chivalry by now to be aware that if a sympathizer, or sycophant, of
the young man happened to be present, he himself would quite possibly
(if the friend happened to possess sufficient courage) suddenly collapse
from a disabling blow on the back of the neck. Also, he was not sure
whether there was any wife in the question; and in this case it would be
a poker, or a broken bottle, held dagger-wise, that he