"All right," he said at last, leisurely pulling off his jacket; "let's fight it out."
He stood up boldly in the middle of the road, with his head thrown back and his fists clenched; but nobody seemed inclined to accept his invitation.
A butcher's cart that was passing pulled up to see the fun, and in a minute or less there was quite a crowd of small boys standing round the angry group. Encouraged by the "gallery," Hayes, who had hitherto been perfectly good-humoured, was beginning to be really angry, and in another minute would probably have let fly at one or other of his late mates; but the policeman, who happened to be at hand, stepped up in the nick of time and placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.
Hayes was sobered in a minute.
"All right, master, I don't want to fight. There ain't one a' them but wot I could pound into mincemeat if I liked, but I'll let 'em off since you've come."
He pulled down his shirt sleeves as he spoke, and Cadger and his mates took the opportunity of slipping off, and in five minutes the bridge was clear. Indeed, the whole scene had not lasted quarter of an hour; and when Farley and Corkam emerged from the back parlour of the Swan, their mortification and disgust at having missed it knew no bounds. But there had been one silent spectator who concerns our story—it was Geo Lummis. He had heard it all, every word, as he hung over the bridge watching the stream. It was no business of his, so he did not interfere; and knowing that he would be questioned and cross-questioned a hundred times over by both of them if they knew he had been there, he turned off abruptly and went home.
CHAPTER XII.
BACK TO THE WORK
Annie Chapman never had liked her husband working at the well. She said as little as she could, and she scarcely knew why, but a sort of nameless fear always crept over her when people spoke of the work. Though she took her husband his "'levenses" and his "fourses" every day, she never could be induced to look down into its depths, which naturally grew deeper day by day.
It was a hot walk though a short one, and Annie's head throbbed with the intensity of the heat, and her feet felt as if they were weighted with lead. It was like walking on hot flags, she thought, as she plodded over the common with the last baby in her arms. The men had rigged up a sort of rough tent with four poles and a stack-cover, and placed a couple of benches underneath it, and Annie stopped to rest under its grateful shade. She was a little early, and Tom was still at work ninety feet below her. She shuddered as she thought of it, and Martin's daughter, who had come on the same errand for her father, laughed at her.