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the Cheshire man's lacerated lip. Close quarters, yard arm to yard arm, 

 each fibbing like mad at the other till they roll over together. It is hard 

 to tell which has had the best or worst of it. 



It needs more sponging than can be done in half-a-minute to wipe the 

 traces of battle from the faces of the two men, and both are still bleeding 

 when they come up once more to the call of "Time." Not a fraction of a 

 second is lost in sparring : Keate walks up to Harry, and lets fly without 

 ceremony. The blow catches Flowers on the shoulder, near the collar-bone, 

 but the counter, swift as Tom Belcher's, from Hal's right lights upon the 

 Cestrian's nose, and seems to flatten it all over his face, sending the blood 

 squirting to right and left. " Bravo, Wiltshire ! " The Cheshire lad, who 

 will not hit straight, though his friends say straight hitting is his forte, aims 

 a terrific roucdhander at Harry's nob, but the keen eye of the Southerner sees 

 it coming, he ducks, and the iron fist of Keate whistles harmlessly past his 

 ear. Not so his own return, for he sends in a cruel uppercut, which jerks 

 Keate's head up, and lifts his chin suddenly to an angle of forty-five degrees. 

 Tremendous cheering and chevying from the hearty lungs of the Wiltshire 

 and Berkshire sportsmen. Keate was stung by that blow — he comes on 

 with a sour and fierce look on his face — from which the blood trickles 

 steadily. And now, for full two minutes, there is such fighting as works 

 the spectators into a perfect frenzy of enthusiasm. Without the faintest 

 attempt to stop or avoid a blow, the two men stand up and punch away, 

 left, right, left, right — the blows falling like the strokes of a hammer on the 

 anvil — every hit tells, yet neither flinches or quails. The air is rent with 

 shouts of "Well done. Flowers!" "Bravo! Keate!" "That's one for 

 old Wiltshire. Go it, Harry."- "Cheshire for ever. Hammer away, 

 Keate." The excitement is maddening. Forgetful of everything but the 

 two panting, struggling gladiators before them, the spectators press forward, 

 wave their hats, and shout themselves hoarse as if their very lives depended 

 upon the issue of the combat. Both men are pretty nearly hit to a stand- 

 still, yet both have their wits about them, when Flowers dashes a tremen- 

 dous lefthander full into the pit of Keate's stomach, which doubles him up 

 and tumbles him over in a heap almost at the feet of his seconds. And so, 

 amid loud and continued clapping of hands, the round ends. The Southern 

 gentlemen are in ecstasies, ready to bet 6 to 4 on their man, but their rivals 

 are equally ready to take these odds for the latter, thinking their man has 

 given quite as good as he has got. 



Both men are very slow in coming up to the call of time, and no wonder, 

 for that desperate, hammer and tongs, ding dong, give-and-take business in 

 the last round was enough to take the buckram out of the best trained man 

 that ever chucked his castor inside a twenty-four foot ring. For quite a 

 minute they stand facing one another with their arms down— each panting 

 and breathing hard — then Keate wakes up, and sends in a terrific right- 

 hander ; but Harry dodges it cleverly, and then dashes in his own right 

 straight as an arrow full and fair between the eyes, with a spank that is 

 plainly heard by those on the very verge of the crowd. The blow would 

 have felled a bullock, and Keate after one long stagger backwards again 

 measures his length on the stage. 



But somehow those knock-down blows do not seem to affect the Cheshire 

 man much. He comes up looking as resolute and confident as ever, though 



