very blow
close by the basket, and though he is rather stiff in his returns,
after a minute walks Joe about the stage, and is clearly a stanch old
gamester. Joe now comes in, and making the most of his height, tries to
get over the old man's guard at half-stick, by which he takes a smart
blow in the ribs and another on the elbow, and nothing more. And now he
loses wind and begins to puff, and the crowd laugh. "Cry 'hold,' Joe;
thee'st met thy match!" Instead of taking good advice and getting his
wind, Joe loses his temper, and strikes at the old man's body.

"Blood, blood!" shout the crowd; "Joe's head's broke!"

Who'd have thought it? How did it come? That body-blow left Joe's head
unguarded for a moment; and with one turn of the wrist the old gentleman
has picked a neat little bit of skin off the middle of his forehead; and
though he won't believe it, and hammers on for three more blows despite
of the shouts, is then convinced by the blood trickling into his eye.
Poor Joe is sadly crestfallen, and fumbles in his pocket for the other
half-sovereign, but the old gamester won't have it. "Keep thy money,
man, and gi's thy hand," says he; and they shake hands. But the old
gamester gives the new hat to the shepherd, and, soon after, the
half-sovereign to Willum, who thereout decorates his sweetheart with
ribbons to his heart's content.

"Who can a be?" "Wur do a cum from?" ask the crowd. And it soon flies
about that the old west-country champion, who played a tie with Shaw the
Lifeguardsman at "Vizes" twenty years before, has broken Joe Willis's
crown for him.

How my country fair is spinning out! I see I must skip the wrestling;
and the boys jumping in sacks, and rolling wheelbarrows blindfolded;
and the donkey-race, and the fight which arose thereout, marring the
otherwise peaceful "veast;" and the frightened scurrying away of the
female feast-goers, and descent of Squire Brown, summoned by the wife of
one of the combatants to stop it; which he wouldn't start to do till he
had got on his top-boots. Tom is carried away by old Benjy, dog-tired
and surfeited with pleasure, as the evening comes on and the dancing
begins in the booths; and though Willum, and Rachel in her new ribbons,
and many another good lad and lass don't come away just yet, but have
a good step out, and enjoy it, and get no harm thereby, yet we, being
sober folk, will just stroll away up through the churchyard, and by the
old yew-tree, and get a quiet