Probably they felt the disgrace of the contortions they were made to go
through more than the pain, but the pain was fierce, for the farmer laid
about from a practised arm, and did not consider that he had done enough
till he was well breathed and his ruddy jowl inflamed. He paused, to
receive the remainder of the cock-pheasant in his face.

"Take your beastly bird," cried Richard.

"Money, my lads, and interest," roared the farmer, lashing out again.

Shameful as it was to retreat, there was but that course open to them.
They decided to surrender the field.

"Look! you big brute," Richard shook his gun, hoarse with passion, "I'd
have shot you, if I'd been loaded. Mind if I come across you when I'm
loaded, you coward, I'll fire!" The un-English nature of this threat
exasperated Farmer Blaize, and he pressed the pursuit in time to bestow a
few farewell stripes as they were escaping tight-breeched into neutral
territory. At the hedge they parleyed a minute, the farmer to inquire if
they had had a mortal good tanning and were satisfied, for when they
wanted a further instalment of the same they were to come for it to
Belthorpe Farm, and there it was in pickle: the boys meantime exploding
in menaces and threats of vengeance, on which the farmer contemptuously
turned his back. Ripton had already stocked an armful of flints for the
enjoyment of a little skirmishing. Richard, however, knocked them all
out, saying, "No! Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave that to the
blackguards."

"Just one shy at him!" pleaded Ripton, with his eye on Farmer Blaize's
broad mark, and his whole mind drunken with a sudden revelation of the