The Old North Road was nearly a mile in length between these wooden walls, and it was a street to be shunned not only by females but by solitary travelers of even the stronger sex, for it afforded no means of escape from an unpleasant encounter.
When I had traveled about one third of its length my attention was attracted to an excited group of men some three hundred yards distant.
These men I found, on nearing them, to be coal-heavers employed by the railway company, and already a good deal exhilarated by their wages-day libations.
They were broad-shouldered, powerful men—a collection of sooty giants—and the sport which they were enjoying was an impromptu dog-fight, an amusement entirely after their own heart.
As I approached the group on the one side, a young man of about my own age neared it from the other, and we both stopped to ascertain the cause of the excitement.
The sight of one dog apparently killing the other was to me a revolting spectacle, and I was turning away in disgust when I saw the other arrival elbow his way fiercely through the men and attempt to drag off the dog which seemed to be gaining the victory; in doing which he certainly risked his life.
“O, you great, black cowards!” he shouted, his voice ringing in the air like a trumpet, “to allow two poor creatures to worry each other in such a way!”
His movements were so sudden that he had actually grasped one of the dogs before his intention could be frustrated, but as soon as he touched the animal a burly coal-heaver seized him round the waist, and lifting him high in air, carried him out of the crush into the middle of the road, where he planted him on the ground and released his hold. Not ill-naturedly altogether, but yet with a warning look in his grimy face he placed his bulky body in front of the disturber of the fight, saying as he did so, “Master, we are not molesting you, leave us alone, or——” the threat in his eyes supplied the rest.
The stranger whose face was pale as death, and whose eyes literally flamed with rage, said not a word, but, quick as lightning, his right hand shot out and struck his opponent straight between the eyes. The amazing fury of the blow, the skill with which it was given, and the smallness of the hand which struck it, had, to some extent, the same effect on the dense skull of the coal-heaver as the pole axe has on the head of the ox. He fell, not backward, but forward, on his knees, as a bullock falls when struck.
The group around the two dogs had given no more thought to the intruder after their companion had removed him, but now one looked around and seeing his friend on the ground and probably concluding that the foreign-looking stranger had stabbed him, he rushed to secure the intruder.