CHAPTER X
SOME INTERVIEWS
Those from whom it was most desired to keep all information of the coming fight were the first to hear of it. Mr. Moses told Mr. Merle, the vicar, and Mr. Merle resented the news bitterly. He decided, indeed, that such a proceeding would disgrace the parish.
"We might as well revive the horrors of our bull-ring," he said. "It cannot and must not be."
The good man referred to a considerable tract of ground beneath the southern wall of the churchyard--a region known as the 'bull-ring' and authentically connected with obsolete sports.
Ernest Maunder was most unfortunate in the ally that he had expected to win. Sir Guy Flamank, the lord of the manor, though enrolled on the Commission of the Peace, was before all else a sportsman, as he declared at every opportunity. Somehow this gentleman, by means mysteriously hidden, became aware of the little matter in hand on the very morning after the arrangement, and though Ernest called at the Manor House, he found the Justice unable to see him. Thrice he was thus evaded, and when once he met Sir Guy on horseback, Mr. Maunder could not fail to mark how the knight retreated before him with obvious and paltry evasion. That a Justice of the Peace could thus ignore his responsibilities, caused both Mr. Maunder and Mr. Moses much indignant uneasiness.
At breakfast on the day after his undertaking, David Bowden announced the thing he intended to do; and while his mother wept some natural tears, nobody else showed any sorrowful emotion. Indeed Elias was grimly glad.
"Well done thou!" he said. "I've long wanted for some son of mine to show me a bit of valour above common, and now 'tis left for the eldest to do it. You'll trounce him to the truth of music, for there's a tougher heart in you than that man, and you've lived a tougher life."
"What'll Madge say?" asked Dorcas.
"She needn't know about it," declared David. "We're to fight in about three weeks, and the day's to be kept a secret as long as possible."