, well
swayed. The boys tried to close with him. He kept his distance and lashed
without mercy. Black blood was made by Farmer Blaize that day! The boys
wriggled, in spite of themselves. It was like a relentless serpent
coiling, and biting, and stinging their young veins to madness. Probably
they felt the disgrace of the contortions they were made to go through
more than the pain, but the pain was fierce, for the farmer laid about
from a practised arm, and did not consider that he had done enough till
he was well breathed and his ruddy jowl inflamed. He paused, to receive
the remainder of the cock-pheasant in his face.

"Take your beastly bird," cried Richard.

"Money, my lads, and interest," roared the farmer, lashing out again.

Shameful as it was to retreat, there was but that course open to them.
They decided to surrender the field.

"Look! you big brute," Richard shook his gun, hoarse with passion, "I'd
have shot you, if I'd been loaded. Mind if I come across you when I'm
loaded, you coward, I'll fire!" The un-English nature of this threat
exasperated Farmer Blaize, and he pressed the pursuit in time to bestow a
few farewell stripes as they were escaping tight-breeched into neutral
territory. At the hedge they parleyed a minute, the farmer to inquire if
they had had a mortal good tanning and were satisfied, for when they
wanted a further instalment of the same they were to come for it to
Belthorpe Farm, and there it was in pickle: the boys meantime exploding
in menaces and threats of vengeance, on which the farmer contemptuously
turned his back. Ripton had already stocked an armful of flints for the
enjoyment of a little skirmishing. Richard, however, knocked them all
out, saying, "No! Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave that to the
blackguards."

"Just one shy at him!" pleaded Ripton, with his eye on Farmer Blaize's
broad mark, and his whole mind drunken with a sudden revelation of the
advantages of light troops in opposition to heavies.

"No," said Richard, imperatively, "no stones," and marched briskly away.
Ripton followed with a sigh. His leader's magnanimity was wholly beyond
him. A good spanking mark at the farmer would have relieved Master
Ripton; it would have done nothing to console Richard Feverel for the
ignominy he had been compelled to submit to. Ripton was familiar with the
rod, a monster much despoiled of his terrors by intimacy. Birch-fever was
past with this boy. The horrible sense of shame,