Bob,' cried a big boy, and that I noticed especially,
because I thought it unkind of him, after eating of my toffee as he
had that afternoon; 'finish him off, neck and crop; he deserves it for
sticking up to a man like you.'

But I was not so to be finished off, though feeling in my knuckles now
as if it were a blueness and a sense of chilblain. Nothing held except
my legs, and they were good to help me. So this bout, or round, if you
please, was foughten warily by me, with gentle recollection of what my
tutor, the clever boy, had told me, and some resolve to earn his praise
before I came back to his knee again. And never, I think, in all my
life, sounded sweeter words in my ears (except when my love loved me)
than when my second and backer, who had made himself part of my doings
now, and would have wept to see me beaten, said,--

'Famously done, Jack, famously! Only keep your wind up, Jack, and you'll
go right through him!'

Meanwhile John Fry was prowling about, asking the boys what they thought
of it, and whether I was like to be killed, because of my mother's
trouble. But finding now that I had foughten three-score fights already,
he came up to me woefully, in the quickness of my breathing, while I sat
on the knee of my second, with a piece of spongious coralline to ease
me of my bloodshed, and he says in my ears, as if he was clapping spurs
into a horse,--

'Never thee knack under, Jan, or never coom naigh Hexmoor no more.'

With that it was all up with me. A simmering buzzed in my heavy brain,
and a light came through my eyeplaces. At once I set both fists again,
and my heart stuck to me like cobbler's wax. Either Robin Snell should
kill me, or I would conquer Robin Snell. So I went in again with my
courage up, and Bob came smiling for victory, and I hated him for
smiling. He let at me with his left hand, and I gave him my right
between his eyes, and he blinked, and was not pleased with it. I feared
him not, and spared him not, neither spared myself. My breath came
again, and my heart stood cool, and my eyes struck fire no longer. Only
I knew that I would die sooner than shame my birthplace. How the rest
of it was I know not; only that I had the end of it, and helped to put
Robin in bed.

CHAPTER III

THE WAR-PATH OF THE DOONES

From Tiverton town to the town of Oare is a very long and painful road,
and in good truth the traveller must make his way, as the saying is; for
the way is still unmade, at