strolling on the next Saturday afternoon, with Ralston's letter
in his pocket Saturday was a half-holiday, and he was free to do with
it what he pleased. His feet took him by an unfrequented way, and in
the course of an hour's devious ramble he found himself on the canal
spoil-bank. The cutting was perhaps a hundred feet deep, and the
artificial mounds were old enough to be covered by turf and gorse. They
bore here and there a tree, and in any hollow of the hills, where the
chimneys and furnace-fires were hidden, it needed no special gift of
the imagination to make a rolling prairie of the scene, or at least a
grouse-peopled moor.

Paul sat down in such a hollow and read Ralston's letter for the
thousandth time, and resolved anew on lofty conduct Suddenly he was
aware of an approaching noise of voices, and in a little while a rabble
of some twenty men and youths came charging down the slope to where he
lounged in communion with his own fancies. The small crowd was noisy and
excited, and Paul noticed some pallid, staring faces as it hurried by.
The whole contingent, wrangling and cursing unintelligibly, came to a
sudden halt in the bend of the hollow. Here a man in corduroys and a
rabbit-skin waistcoat called in a stentorian voice for order, and the
babel gradually died down.

'These are the draws,' said the man in the rabbit-skin waistcoat, waving
a dirty scrap of paper in a dirtier hand--'these are the draws for the
first encounter.'

He began to read a list of names. The first was answered in a tone of
bullying jocundity. The second and the third name each elicited a growl
At the call of the fourth name there was no response.

'Blades!' called the man in the rabbit-skin waistcoat--'Ikey Blades of
Quanymoor!'

Everybody turned to stare at Paul.

'That's him,' said one. 'Course it is,' said another.

'Bin yo Ikey Blades from Quarrymoor?' asked the man with the list.

'No,' said Paul

The man cursed, devoting himself and Paul to unnameable penalties.
He wound up by asking Paul what he was doing. He wrapped this simple
inquiry in a robe of blasphemies. 'Nothing particular,' Paul
answered. 'What's the matter?' 'Tak' it easy with him,' said a burly,
hoarse-voiced man. 'Beest thee i' the Major's pay?' 'Major?' asked Paul.
'What Major?' 'Why--Major Fellowes!'

'No,' said Paul, laughing. 'I've got no more to do with the police than
thee hast. What is it, lads? A bit of a match, eh? Goo along. Need'st
ha' no fear