w back and made a bull-like rush at his
foe,--bull-like, for it butted full at him with the powerful down-bent
head, and the two fists doing duty as horns. The rush spent, he found
himself in the position of a man milled. I take it for granted that
every Englishman who can call himself a man--that is, every man who
has been an English boy, and, as such, been compelled to the use of
his fists--knows what a "mill" is. But I sing not only "pueris," but
"virginibus." Ladies, "a mill,"--using with reluctance and contempt for
myself that slang in which ladywriters indulge, and Girls of the Period
know much better than they do their Murray,--"a mill,"--speaking not to
ladywriters, not to Girls of the Period, but to innocent damsels, and in
explanation to those foreigners who only understand the English language
as taught by Addison and Macaulay,--a "mill" periphrastically means
this: your adversary, in the noble encounter between fist and fist, has
so plunged his head that it gets caught, as in a vice, between the side
and doubled left arm of the adversary, exposing that head, unprotected
and helpless, to be pounded out of recognizable shape by the right fist
of the opponent. It is a situation in which raw superiority of force
sometimes finds itself, and is seldom spared by disciplined superiority
of skill. Kenelm, his right fist raised, paused for a moment, then,
loosening the left arm, releasing the prisoner, and giving him a
friendly slap on the shoulder, he turned round to the spectators and
said apologetically, "He has a handsome face: it would be a shame to
spoil it."

Tom's position of peril was so obvious to all, and that good-humoured
abnegation of the advantage which the position gave to the adversary
seemed so generous, that the labourers actually hurrahed. Tom, himself
felt as if treated like a child; and alas, and alas for him! in wheeling
round, and regathering himself up, his eye rested on Jessie's face. Her
lips were apart with breathless terror: he fancied they were apart with
a smile of contempt. And now he became formidable. He fought as fights
the bull in the presence of the heifer, who, as he knows too well, will
go with the conqueror.

If Tom had never yet fought with a man taught by a prizefighter, so
never yet had Kenelm encountered a strength which, but for the lack of
that teaching, would have conquered his own. He could act no longer on
the defensive; he could no longer play, like a dexterous fencer