ng women
at Ragstroar's to call in help; either his father's from the nearest
pot-house, or any police-officer, whichever came first.

Quick work it was! A gasp or two, and the man's natural flinching before
the great prizefighter and his terrible reputation had to yield to the
counsels of despair. It had to be done, somehow. He led with his
left--so an expert tells us we should phrase it--and hoped that his
greater alacrity would land a face-blow, and cause an involuntary
movement of the fists to lay the body open. Then his knife, and a rip,
and the thing would be done.

It might have been so, easily, had it been a turn-to with the gloves,
for diversion. Then, twenty years of disuse would have had their say,
and the slow paralysing powers of old age asserted themselves, quenching
the swift activity of hand and eye, and making their responsive energy,
that had given him victory in so many a hard-fought field, a memory of
the past. But it was not so now. The tremendous tension of his heartfelt
anger, when he found himself face to face with its dastardly object,
made him again, for one short moment, the man that he had been in the
plenitude of his early glory. Or, short of that, a near approach to it.

For never was a movement swifter than old Mo's duck to the left, which
allowed his opponent's "lead off" to pass harmless over his right
shoulder. Never was a cross-counter more deadly, more telling, than the
blow with his right, which had never moved till that moment, landing
full on the convict's jaw, and stretching him, insensible or dead, upon
the ground. The sound of it reached the men who came running in through
the arch, and made more than one regret he had not been there a moment
sooner, to see it.

Speechless and white with excitement, all crowded down to where Mo was
kneeling by the woman who lay stretched upon the ground beyond. Not
dead, for she was moving, and speaking. And he was answering, but not in
his old voice.

"I'm all as right as a trivet, M'riar. It's you I'm a-thinkin' of....
Some of you young men run for the doctor."

One appeared, out of space. Things happen so, in events of this sort,
in London. No--she is not to be lifted about, till he sees what harm's
done. Keep your hands off, all!

By some unaccountable common consent, the man on the ground, motionless,
may wait his turn. Two or three inspect him, and one tentatively prods
at the inanimate body to make it show signs of life, but is ch