"These," said the master, "are very useful for deadening a blow, and yet you can give pretty good hard licks with them."
"I fight with my fists," persisted Tom, "and I don't care to have them swathed in pillows, no matter what the other fellow might think."
"Well," said Copford, genially, "you can't expect me to go round town with a black eye and a swollen nose, can you? And yet I have known such gloves to close up a man's eye. Here, help me to place these benches out of the way."
Tom went to work with a will, and in a few minutes the whole central portion of the schoolroom was clear.
"Now I'll tie on the gloves for you," said Copford, which he did, afterwards putting on his own.
Tom swung round his arms, with the unaccustomed pillows, as he called them, at the ends of them.
"I don't like these things a little bit," he said. "They seem to me clumsy. I don't see how anybody can do anything with them."
"I knew I should interest you," said the teacher. "That was why I asked you to wait. Now, smite me with one of them. But, I say, Tom, you mustn't stand like that, or you'll get knocked over before you know where you are. Put your foot forward as you see me doing."
"Look here, master," said Tom pugnaciously, "you stand as you like, and I'll do the same, and be very thankful if you can stand at all when I get through with you."
"All right," replied the teacher, "but remember I have warned you. Now hit out, and let us see what you can do."
Tom lunged forward and had his blow parried. Again and again he tried to strike the young man, who seemed to stand so carelessly before him, yet whose arm was ever ready to nullify the most powerful blow he had to offer. The harder Tom worked the angrier he got. Thinking he was impeded by the hand-gear, he denounced the gloves.
"These are no good," he roared. "Even if I could hit you, it wouldn't amount to anything. You take the gloves off, and I'll show you what we're here for."
Hitherto Copford had merely stood on the defensive, but now that the gloves were maligned he shouted out to his opponent:
"Look out for yourself; I'll show you whether they are so innocent as you seem to think."
Tom rushed in where angels would have had good reason to fear to tread, and received an unexpected shoulder blow straight in the face that staggered him. Whereupon he roared once more and came in again; but this time the teacher, with a swinging movement, hit him such a stinging blow on the ear that sent Tom over and down in a heap on the floor.
"Get up!" cried Copford with ringing voice. "Why, bless me, I'm ashamed of you! I never saw anybody so useless with his fists as you are. It reminds me of fighting a cow."
Tom sprang to his feet, his face ablaze with rage at the insult, and rushed at his antagonist with the impetuosity of a mad bull, receiving a blow in the jaw that would undoubtedly have floored him, if, as he went over, he had not encountered a left-hander on the other ear, that restored his equilibrium.
"That's Christian," shouted the master, who was getting tolerably excited. "When you are smitten on one cheek, you turn the other. Of all helpless infants, I never saw the like of you."
Tom put down his head like a belligerent ram, and drove blindly at his adversary, receiving a body blow in the breast that not only straightened him up, but took every atom of breath from him; and then came swift oblivion, for there descended full in his face the most appalling impact ever experienced outside the prize-ring, and Tom's heels went up, and the back of his head came down like a sledge-hammer on the floor, where he lay.
When Tom opened his eyes, he saw standing above him the master, with a cynical smile on his lips, his gloved hands resting on his hips. It seemed to Tom that he spoke in a far-off voice, for his head was spinning, and he felt a strange weakness and unwonted timidity creeping over him. He had a dazed idea that he had been fighting a thunder-storm and had got struck by lightning.
"Well, Tommy, my boy," said the teacher, "what's the matter with the gloves?"
"They're all right, I suppose," replied Tom, weakly.
He raised himself slowly to his elbow, then put his hand to his head, and finding the glove still on, looked at that as if he had not seen it before.
"Now," said the master, genially, when Tom had once more attained his feet, feel-
