“What! Why, it might have killed me!” cried Waller.
“I wish it had,” repeated the boy viciously.
“Stuff! You are savage because you are beaten.”
“Get off!” cried the stranger; and he made a desperate effort to throw his adversary from his chest, but only for Waller to wrench out his hands plant them upon the other’s breast, and thrust him down helpless and exhausted, while he raised himself up, got well astride, and sat up, laughing in the stranger’s face, as he raised one hand and dragged the strap of the creel over his head and tossed it aside.
“Got rid of you,” he muttered. “There, it’s no good,” he cried. “I have you quite tight. If you try to get up again I will give you such a drubbing.”
“Oh–oh!” groaned the boy addressed, passionately; and his breast heaved with the despairing, hysterical sobs that struggled for utterance.
“Ah, that’s right!” cried Waller. “You had better lie still. I am too strong for a fellow like you.”
“Yes,” panted the other; “I’m beaten. It’s all over now.”
“Then you give in?” cried Waller, who grew more and more excited in his triumph, while he gazed down at the distorted countenance beneath him, wondering who the lad was and why there was a something un-English in his accent and the turn of his words, though they sounded native all the same.
“Yes, I give up,” panted the boy; “and you can be proud of having mastered a poor starving wretch who never did you any harm.”