Richard, however, knocked them all out, saying, "No! Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave that to the blackguards." "Just one shy at him!" pleaded Ripton, with his eye on Farmer Blaize's broad mark, and his whole mind drunken with a sudden revelation of the advantages of light troops in opposition to heavies.
"No," said Richard, imperatively, "no stones," and marched briskly away.
Ripton followed with a sigh.

His leader's magnanimity was wholly beyond him.

A good spanking mark at the farmer would have relieved Master Ripton; it would have done nothing to console Richard Feverel for the ignominy he had been compelled to submit to.

Ripton was familiar with the rod, a monster much despoiled of his terrors by intimacy.
Birch-fever was past with this boy.

The horrible sense of shame, self-loathing, universal hatred, impotent vengeance, as if the spirit were steeped in abysmal blackness, which comes upon a courageous and sensitive youth condemned for the first time to taste this piece of fleshly bitterness, and suffer what he feels is a defilement, Ripton had weathered and forgotten.