Oswald shouted 'Help, help!' Before the words were out of his brave yet trembling lips our own tramp leapt like an antelope from the ditch and said-- 'Now then, what's up ?' The biggest of the three men immediately knocked him down.

He lay still.
The biggest then said, 'Come on--any more of you?
Come on!' Oswald was so enraged at this cowardly attack that he actually hit out at the big man--and he really got one in just above the belt.

Then he shut his eyes, because he felt that now all was indeed up.

There was a shout and a scuffle, and Oswald opened his eyes in astonishment at finding himself still whole and unimpaired.

Our own tramp had artfully simulated insensibleness, to get the men off their guard, and then had suddenly got his arms round a leg each of two of the men, and pulled them to the ground, helped by Dicky, who saw his game and rushed in at the same time, exactly like Oswald would have done if he had not had his eyes shut ready to meet his doom.
The unpleasant boys shouted, and the third man tried to help his unrespectable friends, now on their backs involved in a desperate struggle with our own tramp, who was on top of them, accompanied by Dicky.