Five plowmen came in succession, but all were behind the first in time and cut a less regular furrow. So Ewan and the jurors announced that the prize was to the stranger. Then as Ewan twisted about, his adjudication finished, to where Mona stood with Jarvis by her side, there was a general rush of competitors and spectators to a corner of the meadow, where, from a little square cart, the buirdly stranger who was victor proceeded to serve out glasses of ale from a small barrel.
While this was going on, and there was some laughter and shouting and singing, there came a loud "Hello," as of many voices from a little distance, and then the beat of many irregular feet, and one of the lads in the crowd, who had jumped to the top of the broad turf hedge, shouted, "It's the capt'n—it's Mastha Dan."
In another half-minute, Dan and some fifty or sixty of the scum of the parish came tumbling into the meadow on all sides—over the hedge, over the gate, and tearing through the gaps in the gorse. They were the corps that Dan had banded together toward the Manx Fencibles, but the only regimentals they yet wore were a leather belt, and the only implement of war they yet carried was the small dagger that was fitted into the belt. That morning they had been drilling, and after drill they had set off to see the plowing match, and on the way they had passed the "Three Legs," and being exceeding dry, they had drawn up in front thereof, and every man had been served with a glass, which had been duly scored off to the captain's account.
Dan saw Mona with Ewan as he vaulted the gate, but he gave no sign of recognition, and in a moment he was in the thick of the throng at the side of the cart, hearing all about the match, and making loud comments upon it in his broadest homespun.
"What!" he said, "and you've let yourselves be bate by a craythur like that. Hurroo!"
He strode up to the stranger's furrow, cocked his eye along it, and then glanced at the stranger's horses.
"Och, I'll go bail I'll bate it with a yoke of oxen."
At that there was a movement of the crowd around him, and some cheering, just to egg on the rupture that was imminent.
The big stranger heard all, and strode through the people with a face like a thunder-cloud.
"Who says he'll bate it with a yoke of oxen?" he asked.