Scholars politely made room for him, perceiving that in spite of his
small stature, his rusty wig and countrified brown suit, he was a
person of some dignity and no little force of character. They read
it perhaps in the set of his mouth, perhaps in the high aquiline arch
of his nose, which he fed with snuff as he gazed round the ring while
the fighters rested, each in his corner, after the first round: for a
mill at Westminster was a ceremonious business, and the Head Master
had been known to adjourn school for one.

"H'm," said the newcomer; "no need to ask which is Wesley."

His eyes set deep beneath brows bristling like a wire-haired
terrier's--were on the boy in the farther corner, who sat on his
backer's knee, shoeless, stripped to the buff, with an angry red mark
on the right breast below the collar-bone; a slight boy and a trifle
undersized, but lithe, clear-skinned, and in the pink of condition; a
handsome boy, too. By his height you might have guessed him under
sixteen, but his face set you doubting. There are faces almost
uncannily good-looking: they charm so confidently that you shrink
from predicting the good fortune they claim, and bethink you that the
gods' favourites are said to die young: and Charles Wesley's was such
a face. He tightened the braces about his waist and stepped forward
for the second round with a sweet and serious smile. Yet his mouth
meant business.

Master Randall--who stood near three inches taller--though nicknamed
"Butcher," was merely a dull heavy-shouldered Briton, dogged, hard to
beat; the son of a South Sea merchant, retired and living at Barnet,
who swore by Walpole and King George. But at Westminster these
convictions--and, confound it! they were the convictions of England,