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,
self-loathing, universal hatred, impotent vengeance, as if the spirit
were steeped in abysmal blackness, which comes upon a courageous and
sensitive youth condemned for the first time to taste this piece of
fleshly bitterness, and suffer what he feels is a defilement, Ripton had
weathered and forgotten. He was seasoned wood, and took the world
pretty wisely; not reckless of castigation, as some boys become, nor
oversensitive as to dishonour, as his friend and comrade beside him was.

Richard's blood was poisoned. He had the fever on him severely. He
would not allow stone-flinging, because it was a habit of his to
discountenance it. Mere gentlemanly considerations has scarce shielded
Farmer Blaize, and certain very ungentlemanly schemes were coming to
ghastly heads in the tumult of his brain; rejected solely from their