humble to
those who are his masters. Kobylin rose slowly to his feet.

"You have beaten me," he said humbly. "I do not know how; forgive me; I
was wrong. I am ignorant, and did not know."

"Say no more about it," Godfrey replied. "We have had a quarrel, and
there is an end of it. There need be no malice. We are all prisoners
here together, and it is not right that one should bully others because
he happens to be a little stronger. There are other things besides
strength. You behaved badly, and you have been punished. Let us smoke
our pipes, and think no more about it."

The sensation caused in the ward by the contest was prodigious, and the
victory of this lad was as incomprehensible to the others as to Kobylin
himself. The rapidity with which the blows were delivered, and the ease
with which Godfrey had evaded the rushes of his opponent, seemed to
them, as to him, almost magical, and from that moment they regarded
Godfrey as being possessed of some strange power, which placed him
altogether apart from themselves. Osip and the other men of the same
stamp warmly congratulated Godfrey.

"What magic is this?" Osip said, taking him by the shoulders and looking
with wonder at him. "I have been thinking you but a lad, and yet that
strong brute is as a child in your hands. It is the miracle of David and
Goliath over again."

"It is simply skill against brute force, Osip. I may tell you, what I
have not told anyone before since I came here, that my mother was
English. I did not say so, because, as you may guess, I feared that were
it known and reported it might be traced who I was, and then, instead of
being merely classed as a vagabond, I should be sent back to the prison
I escaped from, and be put among another class of prisoners."

"I understand, Ivan. Of course I have all along felt sure you were a
political prisoner; and I thought, perhaps, you might have been a
student in Switzerland, which would account for you having ideas
different to other people."

"No, I was sent for a time to a school in England, and there I learned
to box."

"So, that is your English boxing," Osip said. "I have heard of it, but I
never thought it was anything like that. Why, he never once touched
you."

"If he had, I should have got the worst of it," Godfrey laughed; "but
there was nothing in it. Size and weight go for very little in boxing;
and a man knowing nothing about it has not the smallest chance against a
fair boxer who is acti