The derisive shouts with which the men had hailed every knock-down blow early in the fight soon subsided, and exclamations of admiration at the pluck with which Jack, reeling and confused, came up time after time took their place.
"It be a foight arter all," one of them said at the end of the first ten minutes. "I wouldn't lay more nor ten to one now."
"I'll take as many tens to one as any o' ye like to lay," Bill Haden said, but no one cared to lay even these odds.
At the end of half an hour the betting was only two to one. Jack, who had always "given his head," that is, had always ducked so as to receive the blows on the top of his head, where they were supposed to do less harm, was as strong as he was after the first five minutes. Tom Walker was panting with fatigue, wild and furious at his want of success over an adversary he had despised.
The cheers of the lads, silent at first, rose louder with each round, and culminated in a yell of triumph when, at the end of fifty-five minutes, Tom Walker, having for the third time in succession been knocked down, was absolutely unable to rise at the call of "time" to renew the fight.
JACK IS VICTORIOUS.
Never had an event created such a sensation in Stokebridge. At first the news was received with absolute incredulity, but when it became thoroughly understood that Bill Haden's boy, Jack Simpson, had licked Tom Walker, the wonder knew no bounds. So struck were some of the men with Jack's courage and endurance, that the offer was made to him that, if he liked to go to Birmingham and put himself under that noted pugilist the "Chicken," his expenses would be paid, and £50 be forthcoming for his first match. Jack, knowing that this offer was made in good faith and with good intentions, and was in accordance with the custom of mining villages, declined it courteously and thankfully, but firmly, to the surprise and disappointment of his would-be backers, who had flattered themselves that Stokebridge was going to produce a champion middle-weight.
He had not come unscathed from the fight, for it proved that one of his ribs had been broken by a heavy body hit; and he was for some weeks in the hands of the doctor, and was longer still before he could again take his place in the pit.