one blow with his fist
in Crosbie's right eye,--one telling blow; and Crosbie had, to all
intents and purposes, been thrashed.

"Con-founded scoundrel, rascal, blackguard!" shouted Johnny, with
what remnants of voice were left to him, as the police dragged him
off. "If you only knew--what he's--done." But in the meantime the
policemen held him fast.

As a matter of course the first burst of public sympathy went with
Crosbie. He had been assaulted, and the assault had come from Eames.
In the British bosom there is so firm a love of well-constituted
order, that these facts alone were sufficient to bring twenty knights
to the assistance of the three policemen and the six porters; so that
for Eames, even had he desired it, there was no possible chance of
escape. But he did not desire it. One only sorrow consumed him at
present. He had, as he felt, attacked Crosbie, but had attacked
him in vain. He had had his opportunity, and had misused it. He
was perfectly unconscious of that happy blow, and was in absolute
ignorance of the great fact that his enemy's eye was already swollen
and closed, and that in another hour it would be as black as his hat.

"He is a con-founded rascal!" ejaculated Eames, as the policemen and
porters hauled him about. "You don't know what he's done."

"No, we don't," said the senior constable; "but we know what you have
done. I say, Bushers, where's that gentleman? He'd better come along
with us."

Crosbie had been picked up from among the newspapers by another
policeman and two or three other porters, and was attended also by
the guard of the train, who knew him, and knew that he had come up
from Courcy Castle. Three or four hangers-on were standing also
around him, together with a benevolent medical man who was proposing
to him an immediate application of leeches. If he could have done
as he wished, he would have gone his way quietly, allowing Eames to
do the same. A great evil had befallen him, but he could in no way
mitigate that evil by taking the law of the man who had attacked him.
To have the thing as little talked about as possible should be his
endeavour. What though he should have Eames locked up and fined, and
scolded by a police magistrate? That would not in any degree lessen
his calamity. If he could have parried the attack, and got the better
of his foe; if he could have administered the black eye instead of
receiving it, then indeed he could have laughed the matter off at his
clu