Page:Lorna Doone - a romance of Exmoor (IA lornadooneromanc691blac).pdf/25

 never accept that contumely. But I took little heed of them, looking in dull wonderment at John Fry, and Smiler, and the blunderbuss, and Peggy. John Fry was scratching his head, I could see, and getting blue in the face, by the light from Cop's parlour-window, and going to and fro upon Smiler, as if he were hard set with it. And all the time he was looking briskly from my eyes to the fist I was clenching, and methought he tried to wink at me in a covert manner; and then Peggy whisked her tail.

"Shall I fight, John?" I said at last; "I would an you had not come, John."

"Chraist's will be done; I zim thee had better faight, Jan," he answered, in a whisper, through the gridiron of the gate; "there be a dale of faighting avore thee. Best wai to begin gude taime laike. Wull the geatmnan latt me in, to zee as thee hast vair plai, lad?"

He looked doubtfully down at the colour of his cowskin boots, and the mire upon the horses, for the sloughs were exceeding mucky. Peggy, indeed, my sorrel pony, being lighter of weight, was not crusted much over the shoulders; but Smiler (our youngest sledder) had been well in over his withers, and none would have deemed him a piebald, save of red mire and black mire. The great blunderbuss, moreover, was choked with a dollop of slough-cake; and John Fry's sad-coloured Sunday hat was indued with a plume of marish-weed. All this I saw while he was dismounting, heavily and wearily, lifting his leg from the saddle-cloth as if with a sore crick in his back.