Caliban

Front matter

W L.GEORGE

,l)iU[l;(UjiiiiJi[,ii|iiij!i iiji;ir;iiifSJ;!"ilN'("ii*'(

CORNELL

Part I GROpiNG

CHAP. PAGE

I. Winchester House 3

II. A Family 11

III. Definitions 20

IV. "The Wykehamist" 28

V. Peelude 37

VI. Geowing Up 45

I. Running in Blank 57

II. The Animosity of Mr. Wartle 66

III. Zip 75

IV. Vi 87

V. A Kiss 100

VI. The High Road 107

VII. Scissors and Paste 121

VIII. Hampstbad 134

IX. Lining Up 146

•^ CONTENTS "^

Part III THE VORTEX

CHAP. PAGE

I. The "Daily Gazette" 161

II. Upper Bbook Street 173

III. Politics 184

IV. SiSTEES AND OtHEES 192

V. Full Swing 203

VI. Aptairs 212

VII. Knight 225

VIII. Baeonet 235

IX. Peer 249

X. At Babgo Court 259

Part IV WAY WITHOUT END

I. Janet 273

II. Cutting a Loss 290

III. A Paragraph 300

IV. Wab 313

V. The Furies 323

VI. Lord Immingham 334

VII. Spate 341

VIII. Proclamations 353

IX. Ghosts 367

X. Cruise op the "Gazetteer" 379

XL Power 389

XII. Hullo, Life! 402

XIII. Caliban 414

Part I GROPING

"I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive — what time, what circuit first, I ask not. . . ." — Robert Browning, Paracelsus.

Chapter I Winchester House

A SHAFT of light fell through the class-room window on the round, bald head of old Chips. It looked red as the sun in fog; red as a guinea. Buhner yawned over his Livy and stared at the beam, at the grains of dust dancing in it. He thought, "I wonder how many bits of dirt there are in that beam." It was an interesting speculation, and his mind, that was not at all stimulated by Latin prose, wandered toward the obscene baldness of old Chips. Then he reflected that Topsy, who did maths., science, and commerce, was also bald as any egg, while Clamart, the French master, and old Barnes, who took prep, and messed about, had splendid heads of hair.

"Go on, Tarland," said Chips. "Take the torch from' the fainting hand of your comrade. Ubi, in recensendis captivis. Proceed, O Tarland."

"There, while counting the prisoners ..." stuttered Tarland. Then again, ". . . were recognized

as Tusculans ..."

'^ CALIBAN J^

"Now," thought Bulmer, "both the bald ones are dark and both the hairy ones are fair. Do dark men go bald first?" He grew so absorbed in this problem, which ramified into the practical idea that he might interview a scientist about this, say, the chemist in Canterbury Road, that he started when old Chips suddenly bellowed:

"Compelled! Laturus does not mean compelled. Was ever such a creature known in the Zoo at Regent's Park? Tarland, the vulpine dam of Romulus and Remus suckled you not! But let us draw a decent veil. Come, Selby."

And Selby began to drone forth, construing in sudden bursts, obviously chancing it. Bulmer rcaUzed that it would be his tmn next and, expelling outer-world preoccupations, strove to forecast the sentence where Selby would be stopped and he would have to start. The auguries were favorable, for Selby was lucky that morning. He reached the end of his allotted exercise without mishap, being subject only to the remark that if Livy had used the word "got" three times in six lines he would have been kicked down the steps of the Capitol.

"Now, Bulmer," said Chips, amiably.

"Captivis introductis in senatum, the prisoners having been brought into the Senate ..." began Bulmer, his bright-blue eyes looking doubtfully from under his brows. Ah! that was all right. And . . , OliOidlmandassentque . . . did that mean that the Tusculans had been sent to Camillus or that Camillus had been sent to the Tusculans? It struck him that either way it ought to do, as the whole bally lot amounted to nothing at all. But it didn't do.

'^ WINCHESTER HOUSE "8?

"Camillus sent! Sent?" roared Chips. "Widely does your arrow avoid the mark!" Pleased by the answering sniggers of the class, Chips went on, more kindly : "But don't despair, Bulmer, try again. Try 'intrusted vnth' instead of 'sent.' One day you'll be able to construe things like sine qua non and master equally incredible difficulties."

"... and had intrusted that war to Camillus ..." said Bulmer, despairingly. No remarks from Chips, so obviously that would do. He went on, ". . .he asks one helper for himself for that duty . . ." Still all went well. Then he struck a bit that he remembered by heart out of the crib, and Chips crossed his hands upon his gowned stomach with an air of content. Then Bulmer's memory failed: "... Bomanis intrantibus fines, when the Romans entered their country, non demigratum, nobody emigrated," he muttered, and tried to hurry on, but Chips leaped up in his arm-chair.

"Stop!" he bellowed. "Stop! ere you hurry us all into that section of Avernus where howls the shade of Propertius as it waits for that of Miss Braddon."

"Not everybody emigrated," said Bulmer, hopefully.

"Nay, Bulmer, strive not. Horace foresaw you and said your mountain might be in labor, yet of your efforts should an absurd mouse be born." Then suddenly the master lost his temper and addressed the class more colloquially:

"Gentlemen, you make me sick. I will say to you, as did the officer who apologized, that you are fit to carry guts to a bear. You are my fifth form, but I am beginning to think that you are the fifth form because, in this academy, four forms know four times more Latin than ever you will." His choleric face shone and he picked out Buhner.

"Bulmer, in the words of the Elizabethan barbarian whom you call Shakespeare, I write you down an asB. You are fat and shining, with well-tended hide, as a hog from the herd of Epicurus. Hog and ass. Bulmer, you drive me to the end of my zoology."

A hot flush ran up Bulmer's cheeks, his ears felt fiery, and as sniggers rose about him he grew angry and said:

"Oh well, what's the good of Latin and Greek, anyway?"

"What!" said Chips, incredulously. "Say that again!"

As Bulmer did not reply. Chips went on, "Did I understand you to ask what's the good of the classics, anyway?"

"Yes, sir," muttered Bulmer, shrinking.

"Oh! Plutarch must have been thinking of you when he said that the Macedonians are a rude and vulgar people who call a spade a spade. And, pray, what do you imply by that interesting remark?"

"Oh well," said Bulmer, desperately, "what's the good of Latin? Nobody talks Latin." As Chips stared at him, horrified, Bulmer, who felt very self-conscious, added, "If it was German it might be some use."

After a long pause Chips replied:

"This is not a debating society, Bulmer, but since I asked you what you meant you are en-

*?? WINCHESTER HOUSE '^

titled to speak. You mean that the classics have no utility?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, my child, I might bruise your adolescent head with the periods of Cicero, but, I will have mercy upon you, I will refrain from you. I will tell you simply that utility is base and vile, and that nothing is any good to you if it is useful to you. And this being a metaphysical point, Bulmer, I do not expect you to grasp it. Rather will I teach you to love wisdom and clarity by asking you to write out for me, and deliver, mind you, punctually, by the morning of the day after to-morrow, five hundred times this solemn resolve, 'I must not be a utilitarian.' And now pass on, pass on the torch, and you, Sykehouse, take it up and dance me merrily."

"Anyhow," thought Bulmer, "that's over," and wondered whether it would be possible to fit a penholder with five nibs instead of the usual three. This idea was entrancing, for he was not quite fifteen. If one could only make a penholder with five hundred nibs, why, the great impot problem would be solved.

Winchester House was a bad school, but as schools went, in those days when Queen Victoria had still three years to wait to celebrate her fust jubilee, it was /not much worse than most bad schools. This academy for young gentlemen occupied in Maida Vale a large, double-fronted house, built under William IV and since then seldom repaired. Partitions had been knocked down to make a big class-room on each side of the front door. The paint was 2 7

•^ CALIBAN 'S?

brown. The walls were papered dark red, with a pattern of yellow roses. The boys sat upon forms that were too high for the httle ones and too low for the big ones. In a corner stood a globe; upon the walls hung Mercator maps; in the big class-room was also a colossal gold-framed engraving of the wedding of Queen Victoria to the Prince Consort. Behind the wire-blinded windows lay the gravel front garden, where Ungered evergreens which Tarland called nevergreens. Lost among these shrubs stood a statue of a nude and peehng female pouring nothing from a jug.

It was not such a bad school. Mr. Walton, otherwise Chips, had been to Oxford, taken honors in classics, had married a local barmaid. After being turned out of several schools, because Mrs. Walton visited the bars of the town, either for old sake's sake or for refreshment, he had imitated his wife. Now, fifty, too fat, very red, pompous, choleric, he drank, not enormously, but steadily. He shaved every two days, except when he expected parents. He breakfasted in his gown and spilled egg on it. Tarland tjalled it the robe of the Ethiopian because, like the leopard, it never changed its spots. But Chips had a true and passionate feeling for the classics. He managed to bang and bellow some of his fervor into those sons of tradesmen and decayed gentlefolk from Kilburn and Brondesbury. He was a better man than old Topsy, with his long, melanchoUc head, his soup-scented mustache and whiskers, and his capacity for preventing the boys from ever finding out the difference between the binomial theorem and atonaic weights. Old Topsy taught commerce,

^^ WINCHESTER HOUSE ^

too, a concession to the modern spirit of the 'eighties. He was qualified because he had once joined his brother-in-law in a tea business that failed. Then there was Clamart, the Frenchman, with hair that stuck up and a mustache that stuck up, who taught French, and German, and music, and dancing, and set the boys undesirable translations out of the fashionable Mr. Zola. He was often seen picking up girls outside the Palmerston. There was old Barnes, too, gray, spectacled, and free from all illusions, presumably because he had to teach geography. He also took prep. — that is, he sat down while the boys larked — and page by page he inspected his stamp collection. He was also supposed to supervise games because, thirty years before, when he belonged to the Brixton Hebdomadals, he had knocked up seventy-two off a bowler with a cast in his eye.

And yet Winchester House might have been a worse school. If old Chips, casting treasure before them, and Topsy, automatically chalking up equations, and Clamart, liberating the boya from the pompous Corneille and the wearisome Madame de S6vign6, were not educating, they were not miseducating. The boys learned little, but they escaped being molded into a common form. Thus, Tarland, who was mechanical, found that Topsy let him off chemistry and allowed him to concentrate on light, heat, and elementary electricity. And Selby, who was good at games and nearly sixteen, went about with Clamart and learned a bit about the world. Bulmar was less fortunate. He looked upon the whole curriculum as sodden rot. He hated Latin with excessive intensity; Topsy's chemistry was no good to him. What Bvilmer wanted to know was how they made soap, and what was the real difference between iron and steel. He Uked Clamart. When the master asked him why he was so keen on French he replied, "I want to speak French because one day I'll go to France." Bulmer was not lazy; indeed, if facts had been laid before him he would have memorized them endlessly. He came across Hard Times at home one day and developed admiration for Mr. Gradgrind. Now he was walking home for dinner along Maida Vale, swearing aloud:

"Sodden rot! Got to write that out five hundred times! The same thing five hundred times! As if anybody cared about a thing after it had been said once."

Chapter II A Family

IT was after nine o'clock On the right side of the hearth, in a worn horsehair arm-chair, sat Mr. Buhner, his feet incased in flowered shppers, upon the fender. He was reading the &%. James's Gazette. Opposite — but because she was a woman — in a rather smaller and less comfortable arm-chair, sat Mrs. Buhner, rather stately in her tight bodice of puce alpaca, with a long row of black buttons from neck to waist, and a pleated skirt of black merino, of which the bustle was thrust away a httle toward the left. She looked content, rather rigid, in her powerful stays, that thrust up her bust and narrowed her waist. An estabhshed lady. Her toes turned neither in nor out, in her neat kid boots. From time to time she turned over a page of the second volume of Ishmael, then just out. She loved Miss Braddon. Miss Braddon understood romance.

From time to time Mrs. Buhner swept a look full of capable control over her family, then collected about the round table, and littering with the implements of their work the green plush cloth with the golden fringe. Eleanor was mending socks. She

was very good-looking in a meager way, with her

n high nose, her faintly golden skin, the wavy brown hair, which tossed in rather matted heaps (for she seldom washed it) over a very fine forehead. Her fine-cut lips, the long, nervous hands, and the stirring blue of the large, long eyes, would have made her beautiful if Eleanor had not had the teeth of her period : she did not even have them aU.

In the lamp the bad oil smoked, and through the frosted globe the hght played on Henrietta's featm-es, for the younger sister was nervous. As she bent over the underclothes which she was making out of lawn, all the time her hands sought imnecessary scissors or absent thread. She jerked her head. She looked about her, birdhke, inquisitive. She, too, had the golden skin inherited from her mother, and the bad teeth inherited from Victorian puritanism. Yet there glowed in her eyes — blue, too — something soft, half -flirtatious, that was absent in those of Eleanor. When even she looked at Richard, who sat over the Boys' Own Paper volume for 1883, she gave a httle, half-friendly smile. As if even Dickie were a man.

Mr. Buhner put down the St. James's Gazette and yawned. This indicated to the family that the master of the house was taking his ease, and that his women might talk. Eleanor said :

"I can't understand why you waste your time making those things, Hettie."

"To wear them," said Henrietta, rather sprightly.

(A young man with whom she had once waltzed

three times in a night had told her that she was

spirited.)

"I don't suppose you want to sell them," said

'^ A FAMILY "S?

Eleanor. "What I mean is, what do you want to wear things like that for? Calico is quite as good, and much cheaper."

"I dislike calico," said Henrietta. "If I choose to spend my money on lawn, surely that's my business."

"Oh, surely. But I can't imagine what you want to wear lawn for. Nice women don't bother so much about their underclothes, if you ask me."

"I'm not asking you," snapped Hettie, "and," she added, savagely, "if you ask me, I don't think this discussion is at all proper in the presence of gentlemen."

"Now, gals," said Mrs. Buhner, closing up Ishmael, "please don't quarrel. Hettie is quite right. This is not an occasion for discussing these things. They have nothing to do with your father."

"I don't see why she shouldn't buy things that wear," growled Eleanor, taking long stitches that would avenge her when the sock was worn. She said no more, and contented herself with sulky side glances at Henrietta, who was now giggling and blushing because her father, interested by the conversation, was winking his left eye at her with solemn regularity.

"You girls!" said Richard, "always on the randan! When I get married I sha'n't allow those goings-ons."

Henrietta tossed her head, then cried out :

"You little beast!" for Richard had kicked her shin under the table. He got up, took some exercise-books which lay on the sideboard under the saladdressing. After a moment, as he opened the books, he found there was not room, got up, and placed the Boys' Own Paper on the top of other books on the shelf. After a moment, Eleanor, who had watched him, said:

"Richard."

"Yes?"

"Do you see what you've done? You've put your book on the Bible."

"Oh, get out!"

"You mustn't answer your sister like that," said Mrs. Bulmer. "Eleanor is quite right. You should put nothing on the Bible, not even the lightest paper."

With a growl, Richard relieved the Bible, and, sitting down, began to write.

Mrs. Bulmer, her eyes lost in vagueness, was thinking. Her evening frock was really rather faded. What a pity broch6 went like that! She hadn't been able to resist it. Such a pretty shade of garnet! and it went so well with her crimson flounced skirt. It struck her that something might be done. Perhaps turning might help. And she might freshen it up by putting in a new ruche round the back, and change the shoulder-straps.' What would go with garnet? she wondered. Turquoiseblue velvet? Or perhaps not . . . black velvet? Velvet, anyhow; velvet looked rich.

Mr. Bulmer was reading from the St. James's Gazette:

"We'll have to majse an end of this government. Gladstone left Gordon to die, and now his packed majority has saved him from a vote of censure. Bribed, the whole lot of them. The country's going

^ A FAMILY ^

to the dogs. Still," he smiled, "I suppose it '11 last my time."

Nobody said anything. Politics belonged to the master of the house. He knew. Mr. Buhner was good-looking, fifty-four, very bald, but his baldness went well with his heavy brown mustache and beard, that stood out sharp as if molded against his rosy skin. He was rather stout, but, crossed upon his waistcoat, his podgy hands were pretty. As nobody challenged him he hummed for a moment, tol-lol-derol, fol-derol, and once more took up the paper.

Mrs. Bulmer said, "Dick, it's time to go to bed."

"All right, mother."

"I didn't tell you to say all right, Dick. I told you to go to bed."

"I've got something to do."

"Oh! I thought that at Winchester House they gave no home work."

"It isn't home work."

"What is it?"

"It's an impot. Do let me get on with it, mother."

"Do you mean you've been piuiished? What have you done?"

"Oh, nothing. I just told old Chips that Latin wasn't any use."

Everybody looked at the boy, Mrs. Bulmer, shocked at his revolt; Mr. Bulmer, half shocked and half sympathetic; Eleanor, distinctly censorious. Henrietta grew meditative, as if she wondered what sort of man was old Chips.

Mrs. Bulmer spoke: he had done very wrong; he had been rude; he had been rebellious; he had set himself up.

"Oh, I do wish you'd let me get on with it!" said Richard. "I must not be a utihtarian," he groaned, as he wrote. "I must not be a utilitarian. . . . Oh, lor', father, why mustn't I be a utihtarian?"

"Don't say, oh, lor'; it's vulgar," said Eleanor.

"You shut your ugly mug," said Richard.

"If you say things Uke that," said Mrs. Buhner, "your father will give you a whipping."

"And quite right, too," said Eleanor.

"EUie, you give me the sick."

EveryJbody lectured Richard. Mrs. Buhner intervened and promised to wake him up at six o'clock next morning. Anyhow, he mustn't miss his beauty sleep. The boy sulkily went to bed; a quarter of an hour later his sisters folded up their work and also went up-stairs.

For a moment Mr. Buhner walked up and down, his hands in his pockets, whistling. Mrs. Buhner said:

"For goodness' sake, don't whistle like that, Herbert; you get on my nerves."

"Where are the boys of the old brigade?" whistled Mr. Bulmer. "Things are looking up, Edie; had a bit of luck to-day. A man I'd never seen came up to me in the street and gave me his card. No end of a big pot in Barclay's Bank, and dealt in five hundred Jimmies."

"How much did you make out of it?" asked Mrs. Bulmer, who did not care what Jimmies were, but knew what she wanted to know.

"Twelve-pound-ten. A few more of those and it

'^ A FAMILY ^

won't be Mr. and Mrs. Buhner of Carlton Vale long. We'll be having our own house with a drive and a side entrance for tradesmen in less than no time. I know a little place in Highbury that 'd suit us down to the ground. Or what about those new houses in their own grounds which they've just put up at Frognal, in Hampstead, on the very edge of the town? It's like being in the country. Ah! Edie, if only I have a little luck . . . who knows? You'd like to have your own carriage, wouldn't you? And a box at the opera? . . . and what about a week at the Royal York at Brighton?"

Mrs. Bulmer smiled at him. Poor Herbert, always optimistic. She despised her husband because he was a failure, but she loved him, probably for the same reason. He needed looking after, and when he had a cold she liked to bring him arrowroot in bed.

"I'm sure I hope so," she said. "Were Newton Leslie pleased?"

"Rather! New client, you see. Oh, there's life in the old dog yet. There's more in this half-commission business than you think. Things are a bit unsettled, of course, with all this industrial unrest and these trade-union agitations; still, it '11 all settle down. Mark my words; as soon as we get rid of that fellow Gladstone the trade-unions '11 fall down dead. Dead as a door-nail."

"I'm sure I hope so," said Mrs. Bulmer again. "A Uttle entertaining would do no harm. We owe several people a dinner; and we've got to get Eleanor and Hettie married. Hettie's all right ... if only I could take her to those new dances at the Paddington Assembly Rooms. They say very nice yoimg men go there; young men with property, sohcitors, and even barristers."

"Oh, that's all right," said Mr. Buhner. "We'U manage it."

Mrs. Buhner browsed on: "ElUe's more diiEcult. She seems to hate society. Sometimes I wonder whether it wouldn't be right to let her go out and work, as she wants to, though I don't think it's nice for a young girl to go out giving piano lessons."

" Quite agree with you," said Mr. Bulmer. "We'll marry them off; it '11 be all right. And as for Dick, well, it's too late to send him to a public school, but he can go to the university. He'll win a scholarship or something, or perhaps your brother '11 help."

Mrs. Bulmer smiled. Uncle Hesketh was not generous. His Christmas present to Richard had been a volume of the Boys' Own Paper.

"Ah, well," she said, vaguely, "we'll see. Now let's go to bed. What's the good of wasting the light?"

Half an hour later a figure, clad in a dressing-gown, tiptoed into the room, carefully closed the door, ht the lamp. Richard sat down before the exercise-books and resimied the impot. He was getting on; he had finished two hundred and eighty lines during prep., while Barnes meditated over his stamp-album. Another seventy lines had been managed in the evening. He worked on, and every time he finished a page of twenty-six Unes he said "damn" and turned over. He finished his five hundredth line as St. Jude's, near by, struck eleven. Then he looked savagely at the work.

'^ A FAMILY '^

"Five hiindred times!" he said. "Five hundred times the same thing! What's the good of it? Mustn't be a utihtarian!"

Suddenly losing his temper, he seized the pen and wrote in large, blotchy print, below the last Une, "Why not?" After a moment the fury passed and he said:

"Now I've done it. Damn!" Then he felt inclined to cry. But Richard was practical, and thought, damage 's done; least said soonest mended. Tearing out the page, he rewrote the twenty-six lines. But, as he went to bed, he was still oppressed by his tormenting idea — why not be a utilitarian? Indeed, why not?

Chapter III Definitions

MANHOOD, that steals upon some men slowly, as the sun rises, was to be thrust upon Richard Buhner. But he was to be so little conscious of surrounding fellow-creatures that all the world would be a toy to him. Trouble was to touch his family, and he would take his share of it without knowing that he did more than use his own life. This because, though nearly sixteen, though in the last two years he had grown very fast and was a lanky youth with an intelligent air, he was distinguished neither by attainment nor by stupidity.

The life at school had never mattered much to him, for Winchester House, though it advertised its playing-fields, arranged only ragged football-matches, matching sides of eight when mdre could not be found, or balancing a big boy against two little ones. It was a place of such amiable anarchy that it had not become, as would have a pubUc school, the deity of his boyhood. It did imitate the nobler models; chapel — namely, the mumbling of a collect by old Chips, was compulsory; and there were prefects, overgrown boys who smoked cigarettes and drank pots of beer at the Chippenham. They overlooked breaches of discipUne if a small boy would

'^ DEFINITIONS ^

carry a letter to a girl, or give some trifle, such as a pork pie. Bulmer did not mind; this mean life seemed natural to him; he dreamed a world very Hke his school, and it may be that he was not wrong. Also he was no longer being bullied, for of course there "was a good deal of bullying at Winchester House; no brutality, exactly, no kicking or roasting, or tossing in blankets, but a base habit of minor persecution. Instead of twisting another boy's wrist, a Winchester House boy would put a stump of rotten cabbage into his enemy's coat pocket; or sUp string round his ankles during prep, and ghoulishly wait for him to get up.

Bulmer had been thus bullied because he was smaller and lighter than boys of his own age. All that had ended now, thanks to Joe, who hung about outside the Palmerston. Joe, aged about fifty, and once enormously powerful, had been one of the assistants of Mace, and his sparring-partner when Mace was training to fight O'Baldwin. Pockets of flesh hung below his eyes, and he had a slobbery lip, but, with his close-cut hair and his crinkled ear, he still looked a pugilist. Bulmer had noticed him once, when passing the Palmerston, then talked to him. He had asked him whether there was a difference of kind between the women who went into the bar with men and those who sat alone in the ladies' bar. Joe Uked young Bulmer, and entertained him with stories of the old fights of Wormald and Tom King, and especially of his great master. Mace. So it occurred to Buhner to end irritations at Winchester House by making an example. For several weeks, this costing him a pint a time, Joe led him to a, building-plot in the future Messina Avenue, and instructed him. Buhner took no joy in these contests, and, though Joe played light, he often left a mark on the boy. Buhner soon leariied to counter so fast that his old antagonist had no time to parry, but though his foot-work was naturally good, he had no interest in the game; he persevered because, as he put it, he was out for business. ^

The opportunity soon came. Among his persecutors was a big boy called Gaddesby, nearly seventeen, who had by his stupidity stuck in Buhner's class. He was learning nothing; he had been shot into Winchester House by parents in India, Hke refuse on a dust-heap. They paid; Gaddesby stayed at school; nobody bothered about him. So, being idle, Gaddesby speciahzed in the persecution of Buhner. He put treacle on his seat, and pinned on his back a board marked, "Kick me, I like it." Buhner said nothing. But, one day, when he felt ready, and when Gaddesby had beaten his record by filhng his inkpot with sugar so that the ink refused to dry, Bulmer waited for him after prep. As soon as Baj-nes was out of the way he went up to Gaddesby, and, quietly remarking, "You're a dirty swine," hit him on the mouth. Immediately a delighted ring formed round them. Nobody was going home yet. Not they. And, indeed, they were to have sport, for Gaddesby, though a fool, was no coward. With a bellow he sprang at Bulmer, who eluded him, and, as he passed, struck him on the ear, following this up with a kidney punch. There were roars of applause, and the ring closed up, for there were no Queensberry rules at Winchester