"I tell you this is all a lie, and I'll prove it when we've had a taste of good hard blows. Come over here, you three, and we'll fight the lot of them. They're a weakly crew at best, and they ought never to show themselves on a moor."
They hung irresolute for a second or two. Then their love of Griff, right or wrong, their instinctive response to his appeal against town-bred folk, above all, their zest for adventure, settled the question. They crossed to Griff's side, and the nineteen gamesters felt slightly less eager for the fray than they had been a moment ago. Lomax took advantage of their hesitation to throw a rapid glance about him: he saw, not ten yards on his left, the peat-rick which he had built up a few days ago, and which his farm-man was to cart away at the end of the week; and he framed his plan of action on the spot.
"Come with me," he cried. "You have sticks, all of you; so have I. Take a side a-piece of that peat-rick, and I'll look after the front. And hit hard: we have our work cut out."
The hesitation in the enemy's camp was over. No sooner had Griff and his three allies set their backs to the peats, than they were in the thick of it. Most of the nineteen had sticks, and the rest came on with their fists, trusting to run in under guard.
Thwack, thwack, thwack sounded Griff's heart-of-oak on three separate skulls, and he was left free for a breathing space.
"How goes it behind?" he called, with a laugh that had the true fighting ring in it.
"Fine, sir, fine," answered Will Reddiough, in between two resounding blows; and "Beautiful!" cried Jack o' Ling Crag, with his big mouth all a-grin and his crisp grey hair on end with excitement.
Sixteen of the attacking party fell back in disorder; the other three were left on the ground as a barricade for Lomax. A second wild rush, in the middle of which Griff could make out the master-quarryman's square-set figure, and a naked knife-blade in his hairy red hands. Strangeways jumped with a yell on the three prostrate bodies, and his blade caught a dancing sun-shaft as he drew it back to strike. Quick almost as the sun-shaft itself, Griff's stick went out, and took the knife, and whirled it high up in the air. The stick made another circuit, and the barricade was increased to the number of four. But it was his last stroke. Jefferson, close behind Joe Strangeways, took Griff neatly between the eyes, and down he went like a log on top of the other four. A wild yell came from those in Jefferson's rear, but Will Reddiough and the rest had their hands too full to be able to glance behind them. Strangeways grunted a curse, and picked up himself and his knife from the heather.
"By Hell, I'll settle accounts between us!" he muttered.
Gabriel Hirst felt his sins weigh heavily on him that afternoon. He had gone up the stream-side to the miller's, but had turned before coming in sight of the house. The deep hollow of the sky seemed, as of old, to be full of God's vengeance: as of old, the vengeance was all for him—for him, the chiefest of sinners. He had striven to murder his friend; save for that accident of the tree, he was at this moment a murderer; how dare he draw near to Greta—beautiful Greta, warm, human, all-sufficing—with the brand of Cain on his brow? He cursed himself for ever telling his love. He turned every single act, every thought and desire of his life, into blackest sins, with all his old-time ingenuity. He saw—physically saw—a Devil with flaming eyes, who stood in his path and mocked him on to the wrestling for which his arms were no longer strong. He leaped up the hillside, with the pauseless spring of the hunted, and went out on the moors to pay his full tribute of remorse. For Gabriel Hirst was a man who could be well trusted to ensure his own punishment.