ed with a thud upon the stone
pavement, where he lay still, motionless, while Myles, his face white
with passion and his eyes gleaming, stood glaring around like a young
wild-boar beset by the dogs.

The next moment the silence was broken, and the uproar broke forth
with redoubled violence. The bachelors, leaping from the benches, came
hurrying forward on one side, and Myles's friends from the other.

"Thou shalt smart for this, Falworth," said one of the older lads.
"Belike thou hast slain him!"

Myles turned upon the speaker like a flash, and with such a passion of
fury in his face that the other, a fellow nearly a head taller than he,
shrank back, cowed in spite of himself. Then Gascoyne came and laid his
hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Who touches me?" cried Myles, hoarsely, turning sharply upon him; and
then, seeing who it was, "Oh, Francis, they would ha' killed me!"

"Come away, Myles," said Gascoyne; "thou knowest not what thou doest;
thou art mad; come away. What if thou hadst killed him?"

The words called Myles somewhat to himself. "I care not!" said he, but
sullenly and not passionately, and then he suffered Gascoyne and Wilkes
to lead him away.

Meantime Blunt's friends had turned him over, and, after feeling his
temples, his wrist, and his heart, bore him away to a bench at the far
end of the room. There they fell to chafing his hands and sprinkling
water in his face, a crowd of the others gathering about. Blunt was
hidden from Myles by those who stood around, and the lad listened to the
broken talk that filled the room with its confusion, his anxiety growing
keener as he became cooler. But at last, with a heartfelt joy, he
gathered from the confused buzz of words that the other lad had opened
his eyes and, after a while, he saw him sit up, leaning his head upon
the shoulder of one of his fellow-bachelors, white and faint and sick as
death.

"Thank Heaven that thou didst not kill him!" said Edmund Wilkes, who
had been standing with the crowd looking on at the efforts of Blunt's
friends to revive him, and who had now come and sat down upon the bed
not far from Myles.

"Aye," said Myles, gruffly, "I do thank Heaven for that."

CHAPTER 14

If Myles fancied that one single victory over his enemy would cure the
evil against which he fought, he was grievously mistaken; wrongs are not
righted so easily as that. It was only the beginning. Other and far more
bitter battles lay before him ere he c