I had never kissed a woman's lips.

Till then I had never struck my fellow-man; but before the sun went down I fought the man who drove the lass in sorrow into the homeless world.

I did not choose to fight; but when I begged the man Jasper Kimber for the girl's sake to follow and bring her back, and he railed at me and made to fight me, I took off my hat, and there I laid him in the dust." "No thanks to thee that he did not lie in his grave," observed the shrill Elder.
"In truth I hit hard," was the quiet reply.
"How came thee expert with thy fists ?" asked Elder Fairley, with the shadow of a smile.
"A book I bought from London, a sack of corn, a hollow leather ball, and an hour betimes with the drunken chair-maker in the hut by the lime-kiln on the hill.

He was once a sailor and a fighting man." A look of blank surprise ran slowly along the faces of the Elders.

They were in a fog of misunderstanding and reprobation.
"While yet my father"-- he looked at Luke Claridge, whom he had ever been taught to call his father--"shared the great business at Heddington, and the ships came from Smyrna and Alexandria, I had some small duties, as is well known.