"Don't recommend it; too dangerous, even if you could locate it. No, you must tap him on the neck; here, behind the ear."
"Any risk of serious harm?"
"None whatever. Absolute kindness to animals, my dear boy. Safer than chloroform. He'll go to sleep like a babe for a few minutes, that's all. Now, at it again. It's cat-and-mouse, lad, so put him out of his misery, sharp!"
The village idiot's voice, still harping on the necessity of smiting Juddy's "neb", boomed out again, and the crowd's sympathy seemed now to veer to Dick's side. After all, many of the farm boys had gone too long in fear of Juddy the Unconquered—a wholesome pasting, they began to think, would do him no harm!
He seemed to know what was in store for him, too, for his crouching attitude as Dick approached him was curiously suggestive of an exhausted bull awaiting the dash of a matador.
A pang of perilous pity shot through Dick's heart, so woebegone did his rival look. But the recollection of the torture this hulking bully had inflicted on Fluffy Jim served to steel his heart. Conscious that the round was wholly his, he lured the tired giant into the exact position necessary for the coup de grace. Then, setting his teeth, he followed Chuck Smithies' directions ruthlessly. To his unutterable relief, the medicine worked like a charm.
Juddy crumpled up and fell, and was counted out before his astonished supporters could haul him to his feet and shake the breath back into his body.
Amid the babel which followed, the sportsmanship of the farm-hands rose to a higher level than had previously seemed possible. Rather shamefacedly, as though they were afraid of being caught at it, they cheered "t'Foxenby kid", and would have stood him a good many drinks if he had coveted such a doubtful appreciation. But Chuck Smithies shepherded him into the tavern, and, with those cunning restoratives known best to frequenters of the prize-ring, modified the pain and unsightliness of his face and eye.
"You're a boxer of parts, sonny," said the admiring bookie, "but you'd never make a professional bruiser. Too soft-hearted! Still, you'll be the talk of the country-side after outing Juddy Stockgill. He's been Cock o' the North two years. At the school, too, they'll make no end of a song-and-dance, what?"
"I hope to goodness they never hear a syllable about it," said Dick fervently.