"Let him fight, or we'll lynch him," yelled the crowd; and thousands, who a few minutes before were ready to crush us beneath their feet, suddenly arrayed themselves on our side, and pressed towards the miner with scornful looks.
"I'll fight the feller," Tom said, after a few minutes' silence, "but it shall be in the old English style, stand up and knock down. I'll have no pistols, 'cos I never used 'em, and don't think I could hit a man, any how."
"A fight, a fight! form a ring!" and the proposition for a combat a la fistiana was received with joy by every Englishman present.
"O, don't, sir," exclaimed the youth who had been the cause of the trouble; "don't expose yourself on my account."
"Don't be alarmed," returned Fred; "I'd fight a dozen men, sooner than one hair of your head should be touched."
"Remember," Fred continued, turning to the crowd, "that if I come off best in the fight, the boy goes with me."
"Yes, yes, we understand the conditions of the fight. Form a ring; stand back there;" and the crowd shouted, and swayed to and fro, and during the tumult we saw a sturdy fellow struggling towards us, as though to get a front view. The man, whose face I thought I had seen before, was not deterred by slight obstacles, and by dint of using his elbows vigorously, and treading on his neighbors' corns, he soon got within a few feet of us.
"And it's sitting him a-fighting, is it, ye spalpeens?" cried the fellow, with a Hibernian accent that was not to be mistaken; and he looked around the crowd, as though he wished some one would pick a quarrel with him, for the sake of variety.
"And it's bushrangers ye think they is, do ye?" the Irishman continued, scornfully; "do ye think ye would know a thafe if ye seed one? Can't ye tell a rale gintleman from a snaking blackguard?"
"What is the matter, Pat?" the miners asked, good-naturedly, most of those present appearing to know our new defender.