Then he waited his opportunity.

One half-holiday, when the schoolboys were playing on the green, he walked up deliberately to his conqueror and challenged him to a return engagement.

The boys crowded around them.

"Is it another batin' ye'd be afther havin', ye beggar-man's son ?" said the enemy.
O'Connell's reply was a well-timed punch on that youth's jaw, and the second battle was on.
As O'Connell fought he remembered every blow of the first fight when, weak and unskilful, he was an easy prey for his victor.
"That's for the one ye gave me two years ago, Martin Quinlan," cried O'Connell, as he closed that youth's right eye, and stepped nimbly back from a furious counter.
"And it's a bloody nose ye'll have, too," as he drove his left with deadly precision on Quinlan's olfactory organ, staggering that amazed youth, who, nothing daunted, ran into a series of jabs and swings that completely dazed him and forced him to clinch to save further damage.
But the fighting blood of O'Connell was up.

He beat Quinlan out of the clinch with a well-timed upper-cut that put the youth upon his back on the green.
"Now take back that 'beggar-man's' son!" shouted O'Connell.
"I'll not," from the grass.
"Then get up and be beaten," screamed O'Connell.