.
That Hardy, one of our Bible clerks, fought like a Paladin; I
know I shifted a fellow in corduroys on to him, whom I had found
an uncommon tough customer, and never felt better pleased in my
life than when I saw the light glance on his hobnails as he went
over into the gutter two minutes afterwards. It lasted, perhaps,
ten minutes, and both sides were very glad to draw off."

"But, of course, you licked them?"

"We said we did."

"Well, I believe that a gentleman will always lick in a fair
fight."

"Of course you do, it's the orthodox belief."

"But don't you?"

"Yes; if he is as big and strong, and knows how to fight as well
as the other. The odds are that he cares a little more for giving
in, and that will pull him through."

"That isn't saying much, though."

"No, but it's quite as much as is true. I'll tell you what it is,
I think just this, that we are generally better in the fighting
way than shopkeepers, clerks, flunkies, and all fellows who don't
work hard with their bodies all day. But the moment you come to
the real hard-fisted fellow; used to nine or ten hours' work a
day, he's a cruel hard customer. Take seventy or eighty of them
at haphazard, the first you meet, and turn them into St. Ambrose
any morning--by night I take it they would be lords of this
venerable establishment if we had to fight for the possession;
except, perhaps, for that Hardy--he's one of a thousand, and was
born for a fighting man; perhaps he might pull us through."

"Why don't you try him in the boat?"

"Miller manages all that. I spoke to him about it after that row,
but he said that Hardy had refused to subscribe to the club, said
he couldn't afford it, or something of the sort. I don't see why
that need matter, myself, but I suppose, as we have rules, we
ought to stick to them."

"It's a great pity though. I know Hardy well, and you can't think
what a fine fellow he is."

"I'm sure of that. I tried to know him, and we don't get on badly
as speaking acquaintance. But he seems a queer, solitary bird."

Twelve o'clock struck; so Tom wished the Captain good night and
departed, meditating much on what he had heard and seen. The
vision of terrible single combats, in which the descendant of a
hundred earls polishes off the huge representative of the masses
in the most finished style, without a scratch on his own
aristocratic features, had faded from his mind.

He went to bed that night, fairly sickened with his experi