And now if you're in the mind, I'll box you for half a dollar--what say ?' He squared himself in pugilistic attitude, and found amusement in delivering terrific blows which just stopped short of Hood's prominent features.

The latter beat a retreat.
Twelve o'clock struck, and no telegram had arrived; neither had Dagworthy returned to the mill.

Hood was indisposed to leave the envelope to be given by other hands; he might as well have the advantage of such pleasure as the discovery would no doubt excite.

So he put it safely in his pocket-book, and hastened to catch the train, taking with him the paper of sandwiches which represented his dinner.

These he would eat on the way to Hebsworth.
It was a journey of ten miles, lying at first over green fields, with a colliery vomiting blackness here and there, then through a region of blight and squalor, finally over acres of smoke-fouled streets, amid the roar of machinery; a journey that would have crushed the heart in one fresh from the breath of heaven on sunny pastures.