"Fair play, farmer!" I said sternly. "It was your beast that began it. Let him have a lesson. I hope the foreign dog will kill him."
No fair-minded person could help perceiving the chivalry of the one, and bestiality of the other; while the combat grew furious for life or death, with tossing and whirlings, and whackings of ribs, and roars of deep rage on the part of my friend, while the other scarcely puffed or panted, but fought his fight steadily from the ground, and in deadly silence.
"Furriner can't hurt 'un much," said the farmer, as I vainly strove to get between them; "made of iron and guttaperk our Grab is. I've been a'biding for this, for two months. I sent 'e fair warning, Master George, by that fellow Slemmick, that you might not lose it. Fair play, you says; and I say the very same. Halloa! our Grab hath got his hold at last. Won't be long in this world for your furriner now. Well done, our Grab! Needn't tell 'un to hold fast."
To my dismay, I saw that it was even so. My noble foreign friend was still above the other, but his great frame was panting and his hind-legs twitching, and long sobs of exhaustion fetching up his golden flanks. The sleuth foe, the murderer, had him by his gasping throat, and was sucking out his breath with bloody fangs deep-buried.
"Let 'un kill 'un. Let 'un kill 'un!" shouted Farmer Ticknor. "Serve 'un right for showing cheek to an honest English dog—"
But I sent Ticknor backwards, with a push upon his breast, and then with both hands I tugged at his brutal beast. As well might I have striven, though I am not made of kid gloves, to pull an oak in its prime from the root-hold. The harder I tugged the deeper went the bulldog's teeth, the faster fell the gouts of red into his blazing eyes, and the feebler grew the gasps of his exhausted victim. Then I picked up my ashen butt and broke it on the backbone of the tyrant, but he never even yielded for the rebate of a snarl. Death was closing over those magnificent brown eyes, as they turned to me faintly their last appeal.
A sudden thought struck me. I stood up for a moment, although I could scarcely keep my legs, and whipping out of my waistcoat my brother's patent box, I touched the spring and poured the whole contents into the bloody nostrils of that tenacious beast. Aha, what a change! His grim set visage puckered back to his very ears, as if he were scalped by lightning; the flukes of his teeth fell away from their grip, as an anchor sags out of a quicksand, he quivered all over, and rolled on his back, and his gnarled legs fell in on the drum of his chest, while he tried to scrub his squat nose in an agony of blisters. Then he rolled on his panting side, and sneezed till I thought he would have turned all his body inside out.
As for me, I set both hands upon my hips, though conscious of some pain in doing so, and laughed until the tears ran down my cheeks. My enjoyment was becoming actual anguish when the pensive Ticknor stooping over his poor pet inhaled enough of the superfluous snuff to send him dancing and spluttering across the meadow, vainly endeavouring between his sneezes to make an interval for a heartfelt damn.
But suddenly this buffoonery received a tragic turn. From the door in the ivied wall came forth a gliding figure well known to me, but not in its present aspect. The calm glory of the eyes was changed to grief and terror, the damask of the cheeks was blurred with tears, the sweet lips quivered with distress and indignation.