excitement. When the blow struck her, she stopped singing only
an instant. She says, no one fears, who has real faith. She will not let
me call her brave. She cannot admire Captain Dartrey. Her principles are
opposed. She said to him, "Sir, you did what seemed to you right." She
thinks every blow struck sends us back to the state of the beasts. Her
principles...'

'How was it Captain Dartrey happened to be present, Skepsey?'

'She is very firm. You cannot move her.--Captain Dartrey was on his way
to the station, to meet a gentleman from London, Miss Nesta. He carried
a stick--a remarkable stick--he had shown to me in the morning, and he
has given it me now. He says, he has done his last with it. He seems to
have some of Matilda Pridden's ideas about fighting, when it's over. He
was glad to be rid of the stick, he said.'

'But who attacked you? What were the people?'

'Captain Dartrey says, England may hold up her head while she breeds
young women like Matilda Pridden: right or wrong, he says: it is the
substance.'

Hereupon Manton, sick of Miss Pridden, shook the little man with
a snappish word, to bring him to attention. She got him together
sufficiently for him to give a lame version of the story; flat until
he came to his heroine's behaviour, when he brightened a moment, and
he sank back absorbed in her principles and theories of life. It was
understood by Nesta, that the processionists, going at a smart pace,
found their way blocked and were assaulted in one of the sidestreets;
and that Skepsey rushed to the defence of Matilda Pridden; and that,
while they were engaged, Captain Dartrey was passing at the end of the
street, and recognized one he knew in the thick of it and getting the
worst of it, owing to numbers. 'I will show you the stick he did it
with, Miss Nests'; said Skepsey, regardless of narrative; and darted
out of the room to bring in the Demerara supple-jack; holding which, he
became inspired to relate something of Captain Dartrey's deeds.

They gave no pleasure to his young lady, as he sadly perceived:--thus it
is with the fair sex ever, so fond of heroes! She shut her eyes from
the sight of the Demerara supple-jack descending right and left upon the
skulls of a couple of bully lads. 'That will do--you were rescued. And
now go to bed, Skepsey; and be up at seven to breakfast with me,' Nesta
said, for his battle-damaged face would be more endurable to behold
after an interval, she hoped; and she mi