, the
landlord of the inn would hesitate about serving you, and if he
did, would charge a far higher price in consequence of the supposed
increased risk. He would never encourage a breach of the peace in
defiance of the county magistrates, who were the authority to renew
his licence at Brewster Sessions. So much, then, if the officers of
justice were _near_.

If they happened to be absent--which, as I have said, occasionally
occurred when a big thing was to come off--there was then a dominant
feeling of social equality which you could never see manifested so
strongly in any other place. A gentleman would think nothing of
putting his fingers into your pockets and abstracting your money, and
if you had the hardihood to resent the intrusion, would think less of
putting his fist into your eyes.

We were by no means certain, as I learned, that our fight would come
off after all, for it appeared the magistrates had given strict and
specific instructions to the police that no combat was to take place
in the county of Essex. Consequently the parties whose duty it was to
make preparations had fled from that respectable county and gone away
towards Six Mile Bottom, just in one of the corners of Cambridgeshire,
as if the intention was that the dons of the University should have
a look in. Constables slept more soundly in Cambridgeshire than in
Essex. Moreover, the Essex magistrates would themselves have a moral
right to witness the fight if it did not take place in their county.

Thus we set out for the rendezvous. Charley soon discovered that
our steed was not accustomed to the whip, for instead of urging him
forward it produced the contrary effect. However, we got along by slow
degrees, and when we came up with the crowd--oh!

Such a scene I had never witnessed in my life, nor could have
conceived it possible anywhere on this earth or anywhere out of that
abyss the full description of which you will find in "Paradise Lost."

It was a procession of the blackguardism of all ages and of all
countries under heaven. The sexes were apparently in equal numbers and
in equal degrees of ugliness and ferocity. There were faces flat for
want of noses, and mouths ghastly for want of teeth; faces scarred,
bruised, battered into every shape but what might be called human.
There were fighting-men of every species and variety--men whose
profession it was to fight, and others whose brutal nature it was;
there were women fighters, too, more