The old man leapt down the
stairs, and seized Downes. "You're the tyrant as has locked my barn up
here!" And a thrashing commenced, which it made my bones ache only to look
at. Downes had no chance; the old man felled him on his face in a couple of
blows, and taking both hands to his stick, hewed away at him as if he had
been a log.
"I waint hit a's head! I waint hit a's head!"--whack, whack. "Let me
be!"--whack, whack-puff. "It does me gude, it does me gude!"--puff,
puff, puff--whack. "I've been a bottling of it up for three years, come
Whitsuntide!"--whack, whack, whack--while Mackaye and Crossthwaite stood
coolly looking on, and the wife shut herself up in the side-room, and
screamed "Murder!"
The unhappy policeman stood at his wits' end, between the prisoner below
and the breach of the peace above, bellowing in vain, in the Queen's name,
to us, and to the grinning tailors on the landing. At last, as Downes's
life seemed in danger, he wavered; the Jew-boy seized the moment, jumped
up, upsetting the constable, dashed like an eel between Crossthwaite and
Mackaye, gave me a back-handed blow in passing, which I felt for a week
after, and vanished through the street-door, which he locked after him.
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