Then Mr. Puddlebox—the flaming wagoner on one leg, vitally exposed.
Mr. Puddlebox, head down, eyes shut, arms stretched behind him, hymned on to victory by the music of the broken bottles in his coat-tails, bounding across the road at the highest speed of which he was capable and into the liver-cutting gentleman's own liver and wind with stunning and irresistible force and rich clash of jangling glass.
Prone into the ditch the liver-cutting gentleman and there lay—advertising his presence only by those distressing groans which are at once the symptom of a winding and the only sound of which a winded is capable.
Mr. Puddlebox, also in the ditch, separated himself from the stricken mass and, stepping upon it, emerged upon the victorious battle-field rubbing his head.
A very loud, panting "Hurrah!" from Mr. Wriford; but before further felicitations could be exchanged, attention was demanded by a fourth party to the scene, who had been approaching unobserved for some time, and who now arrived and announced himself with: "Now then—hur!"
CHAPTER III
DISTURBED EQUIPOISE OF A COUNTERBALANCING MACHINE
This was a sergeant of police, short, red, hot, neckless, filled with a seeming excess of bile, or of self-importance, which he must needs correct or affirm—according as it was the one or the other—with a hur! at the end of each sentence, and balanced by prodigious development in the rear against the remarkable fullness beneath his tunic in the front, which he carried rather as though it were a drum or some other detachable article that must be conducted with care.
Mr. Wriford was a little tickled at this gentleman's appearance and, of the reckless mood that had him—panting, flaming, bruised, exulting—was not at all inclined to be hectored in the way that the hur! seemed to suggest was the sergeant's custom. Trained, however, to the Londoner's proper respect for a policeman, he answered, still panting: "There's been a bit of a fight."
"Saw that—hur!" said the sergeant. "Three of you when I come along. Where's the other—hur!"