CHAPTER III

THE FIRE AT BINFIELD TOWERS


The fight stopped even more suddenly than it had begun, and the two
combatants stood away from each other, with hanging heads but with
fists still clenched.

Fairburn took a glance around on the destruction, a thing he was able
to do by the glare from some burning wreckage which had now got well
into a blaze. Then his eyes wandered down to the two boys with their
bruised and bleeding countenances, and finally up into Mr. Blackett's
face.

"So this is the kind of thing your Tory and your Jacobite is capable
of!" he remarked with stinging scorn to his richer rival.

"Don't you think, Mr. Fairburn," answered the Squire with dignified
calmness, restraining himself marvellously well, "don't you think that
instead of vilifying a cause as far above your comprehension as the
majority of its advocates are above you in breeding, in education, in
station, it would be more sensible to give me your help in attending
to these poor misguided fellows lying wounded on all sides?"

Fairburn winced; his rival had certainly the advantage in the