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 give me the jack when I says my next stop is the newspaper office!"

Nate leans back looking highly satisfied with himself and he's entitled to. He done a good job! But Judy seems worried and thinking about something else.

"You will be careful, won't you, Gale?" she says to me, suddenly. "Rags will be sure to attempt some—some underhanded reprisal for being made to confess to his father."

"I wisht he would," says Nate, pocketing his gun. "All I want is a excuse which will look good to a jury and I'll rub out 'at clown like you rub out a blot!"

Before I can say anything, a messenger boys comes in with a wire from Kid Christopher's manager accepting our terms for a fifteen-round championship brawl, and that drives Rags out of our heads for the time being. But Rags come back and he come back heavy!

A couple days later Spence Brock tells me he was over to New York and who does he run into but Rags, which it lit up like a electric sign. Spence tries to duck, as he likes this baby and pneumonia the same way, but Rags nails him. During the course of the conversation, which Spence says was all one-sided, it comes out that Rags has been gave the air by his father and is working in New York. He's all swelled up like a jump over his job, which is manager in "Louvers," one of the wildest cabarets on Broadway.

Rags and his dizzy pals used to hang out in this trap, and Spence figures that he got the job on the strength of his acquaintance with the high-stepping


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 bunch from the college. What Rags really is at Louvers, says Spence, is a decoy. Spence also warns me to look out for Rags, as this sapolio blames me for his father making Drew City out of bounds for him. I thank Spence for the tip-off, but I can't see how Rags can do me any harm. Anyways, as he's finished second every time, we've hooked up, why, my idea is that he's got enough.

But Rags is a glutton for punishment! The very next day Constabule Watson drops in the office and asks me and Nate to step over to Judge Tuckerman's court, as the judge wants to see us about our stockselling scheme. Somebody has told the judge, says the constabule confidentially, that we are obtaining money under false pretenses. We both know that the "somebody" is Rags, without being told, so me and Nate just looks at each other and follows the constabule over. On the ways we stop and pick up Lem Garfield, now our official lawyer. Lem gets our case moved up and I tell the judge how I'm trying to stage this fight with Kid Christopher myself, how everybody which puts up a dime is protected by a claim on the gate receipts and all their profits has got to come out before I touch a penny. Then I pass up the subscription list to him and the first thing which meets his eye is "John T. Brock, $25,000." He never looked no farther!

"Ah-ptu!" he says, hitting the cuspidor with marvelous aim and speaking to Lem. "Counselor, your clients is discharged. This here seems perfectly legal, open, and above board to me and such is my rulin'. Anything John Brock has got anything to dew with

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 is suthin' I'd like to git in! Jest put me down for a thousand dollars. Next case!"

So that was all settled.

But our troubles ain't over yet. The New York fight promoters gets red-headed over me turning down their offers and trying to promote my own show. The result is that when Nate goes over to look around for a battle ground they is nothing stirring. The Boxing Commission also gives him a pushing around when he applies for a license and for a while it looks like we are up against a stone wall. Then Mr. Brock come to the rescue again. He's got more influence in New York than the Prince of Wales got in Buckingham's Palace and a few words from him in the right places done the trick. We got a license from the commission and the lease of a ball park for the night of the scrap, just twenty-four hours after I went up to his house with Spence and told him what was what!

Well, with all this stuff out of the way, I went into training for Kid Christopher—Knockout Kelly, Two-Punch Jackson, and Tommy O'Ryan helping condition me, as usual. At nights me and Judy studies over publicity plans with the idea of making a record attendance certain. I want to cook up something new—something which has never been done before in connection with a box fight and which will be a added reason for making everybody want to see me and Kid Christopher do our stuff.

Finally I hit on a idea which Judy thinks is the duck's quack. It's just this—I'm going to have a drawing of ticket numbers ia the ring immediately be-


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 fore the main bout. The holder of the lucky ticket will be gave one thousand bucks cash! There's a nifty which will only cost us another grand and which I figure will win us twenty times that much in extra tickets sold. Just think, for a five-buck bleacher seat, or a twenty-five-buck ringside seat, you got a chance to see the fight and go home a thousand fish to the good! The kid's clever, hey?

We got plenty publicity on this, and don't think we didn't. The results is that tickets begin to sell like rain would sell in Hades, and a couple of weeks before the meelee we are all sold out!

Nate and Judy is in New York one day checking up with the ticket stands and I am sitting in our office alone going over my figures, when a delegation calls on me headed by the last guy I ever expected to see again anywheres—Rags Dempster. Trying to get rid of this bird is like trying to get rid of measles! Besides Rags, they's three other guys—pale, hard-faced, and cold-eyed. I can't help thinking how perfect they'd all look wearing green eyeshades and with a deck of cards in their hands—or, maybe, automatics!

Rags looks around the office, evidently for Judy, and that heats me up to begin with. He greets me with a kind of sickly grin. Then he wants to know did Nate give me the ten thousand. I nod my head, watching the other guys carefully, and wondering what's what.

"Well, we're all squared up, then," says Rags. "Would you mind giving me a receipt—eh—say: 'Received of Maurice Dempster ten thousand dollars.' Sort of make it—eh—regular?"


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 "Your father's check will be plenty receipt when it comes back from the bank," I says. "I won't give you no receipt which says that you have gave me ten thousand dollars. I might be misunderstood!'

"Do you think I would show it to anyone?" says Rags, trying to act indignant.

"You might lose it," I says, with a sarcastic grin.

"Oh, come on, Galen, act like a human being," says Rags. "You have no kick coming. If we have had a few tilts, why, you've always come out on top, haven't you? Won the fair lady and all that sort of thing!"

"One more mention of the fair lady, Rags," I says, stepping close to him, "and I'll put you on the floor, get me?" I look right at his friends, but they don't crack a word. "They's no use of dragging this conference out, Rags," I go on. "You and me will never be lovers, and we both know it! What d'ye want and who's your friends?"

"They're your friends too," says Rags, "or, at least, they want to be. Shake hands with Kansas City Yerks, Doc Neil, and Rudy Bernstein. You've heard of them, of course."

Of course I hadn't. I shook hands warily, and Kansas City Yerks clears his throat.

"You got a big thing in this box fight of yours, kid," he says. "A big thing! You ought to click off a couple of hundred grand, easy. How would you like to do it again in a couple of months?"

"What's the big idea?" I says.

"Listen!" butts in the fellow called Doc Neil, pushing Kansas City aside. "You guys waste too much


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 time. Here's the big idea—instead of slapping this Kid Christopher for a Turkish milk can, let him stay the limit. Then in a couple of months you and him do your stuff again and this time it can be level. You can cut his throat when you get him in there the second time, for all we care. Think of the gate you'll draw for this second battle, after this chump has held you even once! Now we been to Christopher and his manager and they're business men, get me? Everything's set there! Don't be afraid that Kid Christopher will try to sneak one over on you; he ain't got brains enough to double-cross nobody. Well, what d'ye say?"

I got plenty to say, but I held back a bit. I'm thinking which one I'll crash first! "Where do you guys come in?" I ask softly.

"There's a laugh!" sneers Bernstein to the others. Then he turns to me, still sneering. "Where d'ye think we come in?" he says. "We make book on the first fight and lay two to one you don't knock Christopher out. You fight a draw—that's where we come in!"

"And here's where you go out—you petty-larcency crooks!" I says.

Then the fun begin. Rags must of saw it coming, because he's the first one out of the room and I hear him clattering down the stairs as I throw Kansas City Yerks after him. Next come Bernstein and then Doc Neil, the only one I hit. He went for his gun and I knocked him cold while his hand was still en route to his hip pocket. So that was that.

Well, as the day of the fight draws near I put in no


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 little time trying to get Judy to see me defend my title. She's never saw me work, and the mere thought of watching a prize fight makes her shudder. "Beastly, inhuman, and degrading," is the way she sizes up the manly art of assault and art and it seems nothing can change her.

"But they's plenty of girls goes to box fights, Judy," I says, "and they seem to get quite a kick out of it too!"

"Everyone to their taste," says Judy scornfully; "and don't say 'theys,' Gale; say  ' there are. '  Do you know your grammar is growing more atrocious every day? And you are getting a hard, sophisticated expression in your eyes too." She lays her hand on my arm. "Oh, Gale, it's terrible to have to just sit and watch you being coarsened by this constant contact with your rough associates of the ring. It's horrible! You were so nice and clean and—and delightfully naive when you first came to Drew City. Now"

"Now, I'm just a roughneck, I suppose?" I cut in, a bit sore.

"You will certainly be one if you remain in your present profession," she says coldly.

"Well," I says, as cold as her, "I don't guess you want to have nothing to do with a roughneck, so I'll take the air!" I blowed out of the office, fit to be tied.

That afternoon was a eventful one for my sparring partners, it was for a fact!

The next day Nate sees I'm brooding over something, and being too wise to ask questions he just says to knock off training for the day and we'll go to a show


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 in New York, as he don't want me too fine for Kid Christopher. So we go to a musical comedy called "The Girl from Mars." It is more girls than Mars and none of 'em is dressed for a trip to the North Pole, that's a cinch. During the intermission along comes the press agent. He tells Nate that after the show he wants us to come back on the stage and have me pose for a picture with the chorus. He claims this will be a great publicity stunt both for me and the show. I took another look at this half-dressed chorus and I says that's out, but Nate says it's all fun and shuts me up, telling the press agent we'll be there with bells on.

It will be a long time before I forget this novel experience. In the first place, the twenty minutes I stand back there on that stage with about thirty girls crowded around me, none of 'em wearing no more than Eve is supposed to of wore and all of 'em kidding me, is the longest twenty minutes I ever put in in my life! My face is so red the reflection must of lit up the whole theatre, and when the fellow gets done taking the pictures I run right out the stage entrance into the street. In the second place, Judy sees the picture in a New York paper a few days later and gives me no chance to explain. She figures I need that kind of publicity the same way I need another ear, and from then on she only speaks to me when she has to. That's seldom.

According to my contract with Kid Christopher, we both got to finish our training in New York, so a week before the brawl I go over to Lefty Mullen's gym. Nate makes a deal with Lefty and for a charge of twenty-five cents the public at large is allowed the


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 boon of coming to see me work out. Kid Christopher has his camp at Red Oliver's on Forty-seventh Street.

Well, among the daily visitors to my matinées is a girl from this musical comedy called Roma Romaine. When I had that simple picture took, she was next to me on one side, and I remember she put her arm around my neck and that was just one of the many things which gets me embarrassed. Anyways, although Roma is a blonde which would win first, second, and third prize in a beauty contest anywheres, why, I'm blonde-proof and this stuff of her hanging around the camp is applesauce to me. In my opinion, the female race is divided into two classes—Judy Willcox and girls! So I don't give Roma a tumble when she comes around to see me train.

Then she commences to phone me at the hotel we're stopping at, can you imagine that? This gets me very much annoyed and it gets Nate suspicious. Nate thinks Roma has been hired by them gamblers which wanted me to fake my fight with Kid Christopher and the whole thing is a plot to get me in some kind of a jam so's I won't be right for the bout. But I laugh at Nate and tell him that stuff only happens in books. If I had only knew what was really going to happen, I would of finished my training in Egypt!

This goofy press agent for "The Girl from Mars" comes around again to see me and Nate one day, and he's all excited. He claims he has cooked up another publicity stunt which will get me and his show columns in the newspapers free of charge. He wants me to stand for a story that me and this Roma is engaged!


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 We don't have to get engaged, though we can for all he cares, but just faking it will get the results, he says. Roma is willing, how about me? I let forth a whinny of rage and I tell him that if he ever puts anything like that in the paper about me, why, he had better be in Africa when the paper comes out!

The day before I fight Kid Christopher I nearly faint when I pick up the New York "Whirl" and see a picture of me and Roma Romaine on the front page. She is wearing a bewitching smile and some beads, and she's got her arm around my neck. I am practically dumfounded, as I never had no pictures took with her alone. Looking closer, I see that this photo has been cut out of the big picture with me surrounded by the chorus of "The Girl from Mars." But that ain't all. Underneath it says:

Well, the day of the big battle I get the final blow which goals me. It's a short letter from Judy congratulating me on my "conquests in New York!" and giving two weeks' notice that she's leaving her job as our stenographer. They's eighty-five dollars' worth of ice on each word, and it's signed "Judith Willcox," instead of the usual "Judy." I'm what you call panic


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 stricken, no fooling, because if I lost Judy it would of set me back ten years in my battle to be a success and made the next ten twice as hard!

I grab up the phone and manage to get her at our office in Drew City by dumb luck. The minute her thrilling voice comes over the wire, I beg her to wait till I have knocked Kid Christopher dead and I will fully explain all that stuff in the papers about me and Roma Romaine. Her answer is to hang up the receiver!

That is one fearful day for me, I'll tell the world! Nate is busy looking after the arrangements at the arena, Spence is in Drew City, and Knockout Kelly is down at Brighton Beach with Mary Ballinger. So I got nobody to tell my troubles to and nowheres to look for sympathy except in the dictionary. I got till ten o'clock that night to step into the ring with Kid Christopher, and I duck the training camp early in the afternoon, wandering around New York like a lost Airedale.

Along around six o'clock I am standing in the usual jam at Forty-second Street and Broadway when somebody taps me on the arm. I turn around, tickled silly to meet anybody I know, and I gaze into the sparkling eyes of Roma Romaine.

"Snap out of it—you look as if you had just lost your best friend!" she smiles, shaking my arm.

"You're a wonderful guesser," I says gloomily, thinking of Judy. "That's just what I have done!"

Lots of guys passing turns for another flash at her. She was easy to look at and no mistake. But, Judy!


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 "I was just going to get something to eat," I continued, for want of something to say, "Would you wish to come with me?"

"What could be sweeter?" says Roma, hooking her arm in mine. "Let's go!"

After I asked her I'm sorry I did, in a way, but my main idea in taking her to supper is to talk to her. She's a girl—maybe she can wise me up on what to do to square things with Judy. I ask Roma where does she want to eat, and she picks out Louvers and I'm in this trap and sitting at a table with her before I remember it's where Rags Dempster is working. I know if he sees me there with a girl, he won't be able to tell Judy fast enough. In those days I was very fluent at getting out of the frying pan into the fire!

Well, that was the first time I had ever been in a cabaret in my life and unless I am drugged and dragged in it will be my last! The place is crowded to the doors and they's a good hundred dancing. The jazz music, the dancers, the revue which is mostly girls with less on than the costumes of Roma's show, the French dishes, the famine prices on the bill of fare, dozens of sporting men I don't know recognizing me and coming over to our table to wish me luck that night in my scuffle with Kid Christopher—all this stuff commences to go to my head. Looking around this weird place, hardly listening to Roma's chatter, I get a awful kick out of the beautiful women, the soft lights, the guys in dress suits, and this and that, but still I have a feeling that this would be a good place for me to get away from and stay away from!


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 Roma gets a bit steamed up over the fact that I am not paying her enough attention, and when I call her "Judy" a couple of times by mistake she goes right up in a blaze. She says she could be sitting there with a millionaire instead of me if she wanted to, and while I feel like telling her I will trade seats with the first millionaire she sees, why, I manage to cool her off. She don't have to go on the stage till half past nine so she's taking her time with her dinner, but I gulp everything down because what I crave to do is leave!

Then who comes along but Rags Dempster, loaded to the guards. His first remark is to glance at his own Tuxedo and tell me that he's got a good mind to put me out, because everybody is supposed to wear evening clothes in Louvers at night. I pay no attention to him till he starts to kid Roma. Then I get up and quietly take him by the lapel of his coat. I says if he is at our table by the time I sit down I will get up again and throw him through the big plate-glass window which looks out on Broadway. Rags moves along.

After a while Roma says let's have a drink. I says I don't drink, and I don't know no place to get it. This makes Roma laugh out loud, and she calls over the waiter, ordering a highball as open and above board as if Prohibition was April Fool. She says she won't drink alone, so I tell the grinning waiter to bring me a plain ginger ale. He brung the ginger ale along in a mug instead of a glass, and after I have a couple of 'em I'm satisfied it's the best ginger ale I ever tasted. I ask the waiter what brand it is, and the waiter grins heavy.


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 At's the real McCoy you got there, brother," he says. "Comes right down from Canada!"

"I thought it must be imported ginger ale," I says. "Let's have some more!"

Well, I have plenty drinks of this Canadian ginger ale, and I commence to feel better every minute. My troubles and worries has dropped away like magic and to tell you the truth I never forgot that in a few hours I am going to step into a ring and defend my title. I am having lots of fun and I feel like dancing, which is funny, when you take into consideration that I can't dance a stroke and never could or wanted to till that night.

I have no more than got out of my chair, when somebody grabs my arm and flops me back into it. It's Nate, and his face is as white as a sheet.

"You big stiff!" he says to me, "Have you went cuckoo? D'ye know they's twenty-five thousand people out there at the ball park waiting to see you fight Kid Christopher in less'n three hours?"

"Who's Kid Chris-Christopher?" I grins, and I'm kind of dizzy in my nut. Roma has slipped away into the crowd somewheres.

"Holy mackerel," whispers Nate, "you're lit up like a church! D'ye think you can get it through your skull 'at Rags Dempster and this Jane has framed you? They got you soused so's you either can't show up to fight Kid Christopher, or you'll be a mark for him if you do. You have tossed away your title and throwed down your friends by this night's work, fellah!"

I don't seem to be able to get what he's talking about.


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Rh “Certes, none doth deny,” Knight Hagen spake, “that I will essay it here with mighty blows, unless be, that the sword of Nibelung break in my hand. Wroth am I, that we twain have here been craved as hostages.”

When Dietrich noted Hagen’s raging mood, quickly the doughty knight and good snatched up his shield. How swiftly Hagen sprang toward him from the steps! Loudly the good sword of Nibelung rang on Dietrich’s head. Then wist Dietrich well, that the bold knight was grim of mood. The lord of Berne gan guard him against the fearful blows, for well he knew Hagen, the stately knight. Balmung he also feared, a weapon stout enow. Dietrich returned the blows at times in cunning wise, until at last he conquered Hagen in the strife. A wound he dealt him, the which was deep and long. Then Lord Dietrich thought him: “Thou art worn out with strife; little honor shall I have, and thou liest dead before me. I will try, if perchance I can force thee to be my hostage.”

This he wrought with danger. His shield he let fall, great was his strength, and clasped Hagen of Troneg in his arms. Thus the brave knight was overcome by Dietrich. Noble Gunther gan wail thereat. Dietrich now bound Hagen and led him to where he found the high-born queen; into her hand he gave the bravest warrior that ever bare a sword. Then merry enow she grew after her great dole. For very joy King Etzel’s wife bowed low before the knight. “May thy heart and body be ever blest. Thou hast well requited me of all my woes. For this will I ever serve thee, unless be, that death doth hinder me therefrom.”

Then spake Lord Dietrich: “Pray let him live, most


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 "Blah!" I says. "I can lick Kid Chris-s-opher with"

"If you can lick Christopher to-night, then I can lick that Rocky Mountains!" snarls Nate. "What will Mister Brock and Miss Willcox and all them guys in Drew City think of you now? You'll be about through there, after to-night!"

"Nate," I says, "I'm awful sleepy! . . ."

The next thing I remember I am back of Ajariah Stubbs's soda fountain, and Judy is sitting at the counter with Rags. I hit Rags with the ice pick and Constabule Watson rushes in to arrest me. We struggle all over the place and then. . . I open my eyes and there's Nate, scuffling around a room with me. From down below comes the familiar music of a jazz band and the sounds of clinking glasses and chatter. But the miracle is over in the corner of the room, watching me with wide-open eyes which shows signs of heavy weeping—Judy!

"What—how—" I begins, kind of dazed.

"Shut up and listen to me!" snaps Nate, clapping a hat on my head. "I got a taxi comin' here, and you got forty-five minutes to get into the ring with Kid Christopher. You got a bun on downstairs, and I couldn't do nothin' with you. We tried to get you to go to bed and you put four waiters on the floor! So I took a long chance and sent for Miss Willcox. Spence Brock rushed her up here a hour ago in his racin' car, and he's at the police station now, squarin' a pinch for speedin'. When Miss Willcox got here she talked you into bein' yourself, and after I give you


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 a dozen cold showers she made you lay down, You've had about a hour's sleep. Boy, if you ever forget this girl for what she done for you to-night, you and me is through for life! C'mon, now, let's go!"

I choke and try to thank Judy, but she turns away from me and walks out the door. Gee, I felt rotten—terrible! I'd made a disgrace of myself before Judy, took a chance with the money of my friends in Drew City which trusted me, and showed a weakness which I'd be the first to sneer at in the next guy. Right then and there I made myself certain promises regarding booze, and I have kept them promises to this day. All the ways to the ball park I can only think of Judy's hurt face and wet eyes. Well, I'll never do nothing to make her cry again, so help me!

The mob is dying with impatience, and they set up a cheer which shook the stars when I climb through the ropes that night, a half hour late. I am far from clearheaded, but I'm in there to put up the battle of my life—win or lose! Kid Christopher is a tough looking baby with "I can take it!" wrote all over him. I watch him with about the same kind of feelings Abel must of had while waiting for Cain to leave his corner. I am just aquiver with nerves, but the papers says after the fight I was "cool, calm, and workmanlike" from the minute I entered the ring.

Kid Christopher has evidently been tipped about the shape I'm in, because he goes right after my body, leaving my jaw for future reference. He could hit, too, don't think he couldn't! He pounds me heavy in the first round, and I don't seem able to keep him away.


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 His best punch is a left hook to the stomach, and at the end of round one my stomach is a raw red and pumping like a bellows. The papers says I only landed one clean blow in that frame—a stiff right swing to the head before the bell. I don't even remember that one, but I remember the customers razzed me and holler for me to fight when I run to my corner and Nate emptied the water bucket on me.

I took plenty of punishment in the second round, my first dose of booze having ruined my timing and generalship. Getting more confidence every minute, Kid Christopher shifts his attack to my head, and a sizzling straight left opens a-old cut over one of my eyes, drenching me with gore. Then Christopher sails into me in earnest, ripping both hands to the wind but my mind's beginning to clear and I drove him to a clinch with two torrid rights to the jaw which brought the mob to its feet, howling. While we're clinched, Christopher whispers to me that my trunks is slipping off. A old trick, but I fell for it! I drop my hands to my belt mechanically, and quick as a flash Christopher uppercut me with his right and I hit the mat with a thud.

I watched the referee's rising and falling arm, not being able to hear the count over the roar of the crowd, and at "eight" I got up and back-pedalled till my dizzy head cleared. Then Christopher caught me flush on the mouth with a right hook, and I turn my head to drop a tooth which is of no further value to me. He hit me pretty low twice in this round, and Nate bellered "Foul!" But the referee warns Nate to keep


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 quiet and says nothing at all to Kid Christopher. The gong finds us in a clinch, with Christopher, one arm free, punishing me about the body. He's a good boy, this Christopher, and I'd liked to of fought him again.

"Come on and fight, you cake eater!" snarls. Kid Christopher, coming out for the third round with visions of the light-heavyweight title clouding his judgment. I spun him half-ways around with a right to the heart and stung him with lefts and rights to the head till he's glad to clinch. On the break, Christopher plants a hard left to my body, and I counter with another right to the heart which hurt. I seen it in his face.

Then he begins a rally and we stand toe to toe and slug till outside the ring is a maniac's convention! The blood from the cut over my eye bothers me considerably. Although Nate had sewed it up between the second and third round, Christopher opens it again during this slugfest in mid-ring.

At the bell I am getting up from a clean knockdown without waiting for the count. I'm so groggy I start for Christopher's corner by mistake and the crowd roars when the referee has to steer me to my own. Unless I got a lucky break, it looked like my brand-new title was going to change hands right in that ring!

The break come between the third and fourth rounds when Nate, desperately sponging me off while Kayo Kelly holds the ammonia under my nose, tells me that Judy is out in front! I sit up so straight I knock the ammonia bottle out of Kayo Kelly's hand. I thought Judy had went right back to Drew City when I left Louvers for the ring, and here she's watching me


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 watching me take a proper pasting in the first fight she's ever saw me in, and, for all I know, the last fight she'll ever go to again! Well, I guess that was what I needed—something like that to sweep the last remaining cobwebs from my brain, snap me into it, and make me realize that no matter what had happened, I'm still a champion!

I come out for round four, loaded for bear. Christopher neatly blocks a wicked left hook to the jaw and stung me witha right to the nose. A right swing sends him into a clinch, but I push him off, measure him with a left to the mouth, and as he danced away under instructions from his corner, I sunk a right in his mid-section which didn't do him a bit of good. He then tried hooking his right, but I beat him to the punch with a perfectly timed swing which dropped him on his haunches in his own corner. He leaned on one elbow and gazed goofily at the yelling crowd till the referee reached "nine." Then he got up, shaky and all at sea.

I left his left lead go over my shoulder, stepped in close, and hooked my right flush to his jaw with everything I had in stock behind the punch. "That's the business!" I hear Nate howl as Kid Christopher crashes to the canvas, face down. His legs twitches a couple of times before he straightens out flat, and he never moved again till he was counted out and I help carry him to his corner.

Nate and me fought our ways through the cheering crowd to the main box office, where Spence has come around with Judy. She's a little pale, but her eyes is


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 like a couple of sapphires, only with more sparkle, and a deeper blue.

"Are you hurt, Gale?" she says anxiously, laying her little hand on my arm.

"No," I says. "That was just a ! Listen—even a murderer gets a trial, Judy. Will you let me take you home and explain matters?"

"We can pay them people in Drew City a good two to one for their money," says Nate, looking up from the box-office figures, "and still have a bank roll left which no greyhound in the world could jump over!"

"Oh, I'm so glad, Gale," says Judy. "I knew you'd make good! And you fought such a splendid, courageous, uphill fight against that beast! I"

"Kid Christopher ain't no beast, Judy," I says. "He's a stiff puncher and a nice fellow, but to-night wasn't his night. Maybe it ain't my night either! Judy, if you give me the air, I'm going to leave Drew City and"

"I think we had better get started," butts in Judy—and when she blushes she'd drive you crazy. "It'll take us an hour to drive there, you know."

"It'll take us two hours to-night, Judy," I says. "I got a lot to say."

It took us four hours!


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lies the head that wears a crown!" says Shakespeare to whom it may concern, and that's a remark which could of been written around me! As king of the light-heavyweight box fighters, I only wore a crown a brief while, still in that time I had some adventures which convinces me that kings, like the girl in the song, is more to be pitied than scorned.

The success I had in personally conducting that scuffle with Kid Christopher,—both financially and fisticuffily—sells me the idea that I'm the Indian's feathers as a fight promoter, and I can see no good reason why I shouldn't keep on developing my brains by planning and staging my own fights, instead of letting some outsider do it and walk away with the bulk of the gate. I take the cuffing, why shouldn't I take the doubloons, too? Is the way I looked at it. So my next step is to pester Gunner Slade, world's light-heavyweight champion, for a bout. His nightmarish demands for purses is still making the promoters laugh him off, so now I cable him a guarantee of one hundred thousand dollars, win, lose, or draw, if he'll come over and take his pasting like a gentleman and a scholar. This leaves the Gunner bankrupt of


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 alibis and his manager peevishly shoots back a acceptance, collect.

Well, the first organized protest I bump into after lining up Gunner Slade is Judy. While Judy saw me reduce Kid Christopher to kindling, she also saw the Kid punch me from pillar to post and I took some cruel and unusual punishment before I snapped out of it and flattened him. As a result, Judy says there is nothing in the world could get her to see a prize fight again. We are sitting in our office when the cable from Gunner Slade's manager arrives, and while it fills me with joy it don't seem to thrill Judy no more than it would thrill a letter carrier to take a long walk on his day off. In fact, she seems sore about it.

"You promised me—and yourself—you would give up fighting when you became a champion," she says, plenty reproachful. "And here you are still planning matches. Doesn't your word mean anything, Gale?"

This makes me the bit uncomfortable. It certainly ain't my play to do anything which will make this wonderful girl off me. All I had then was her friendship, which wasn't one-tenth of what I'd like to of had. Still, should I ever of lost even that, why, I'd been a living ruin, no fooling! So I step over to her desk, trying to keep my mind on the matter at hand and not on what a beautiful object to look at she is!

"Judy," I says, "I did promise you I'd quit the ring and I promised myself, too! That ain't a promise so easy to keep, because, Judy—I like boxing! No matter if I have firmly resolved to get out of the game—a


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 resolution I'm not going to break—I can't help getting a kick out of a fair and square two-handed fight—it must be in my blood!"

"Oh, Gale," sighs Judy, shaking her head. "I knew it—I felt it! The false glamor of that beastly profession has fascinated you—gripped you like some horrid drug!"

"Wait a minute, Judy," I cut in. "I'm going to keep my promise and check out of the ring, on that you can gamble. But I set a certain goal for myself in this man's game and I ain't reached it yet. Would you want me to be a quitter, Judy?"

"Gale," smiles Judy, "I cannot imagine the word 'quit' in connection with you—whether the cause be good or bad, once started you'll go through to the finish! But I do not follow your argument. You're champion now and what is there in anything higher than champion?"

"I'm only American champ, not champion of the world—and that's the mark I'm shooting at!" I says. "To write that title after my name I've got to stop Gunner Slade, and now that he's made up his mind to sail from dear old England, all I can say is that he's coming a long ways to get knocked stiff! Another thing, I'm promoting this fight myself, and look at the experience that will give me for future use in looking after business details. Didn't I show the civilized world I could do something else besides box by the way I put on my scrap with Kid Christopher?"

"Indeed you did, Gale, and made us all proud of you!" says Judy. "But that simply proves my con-


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 tention that you would be equally successful in promoting some other bigger—and cleaner business."

"Judy," I says, "what business do I know anything about?"

That question's a horse from another race track and it slows her up for a instant. But then she's one more person which don't give up easy.

"Oh you'd find something, if you really tried," she says. "You didn't know anything about the boxing business until you went into it, did you?"

"No, I didn't," I admit. "But I was born with a little natural talent for it in the shape of shoulders and hands and the ability to take a cuffing without running crying to my parents. That wouldn't do me no good in the busy marts of trade, Judy—the first banker or merchant prince I smacked, for instance, would have me pinched. Let's let it go this way—if Gunner Slade puts me out I'll call it a day and step down from the ring right after that battle, because if I can't take this fellow I'll have no kick coming. I'll have had the big chance and failed to deliver. Unless I go broke promoting the fight, I'll have quite a few dimes left and I'll go into conference with you so we can pick a business for me to plung right into, letting the box-fight game run for the end book! But let me have this crack at the world's title, Judy. I've gone too far in the game to quit before I've had my try at the big prize. D'ye know I sit for almost a hour last night looking at Gunner Slade's picture in 'The Police Gazette'? I'm in a trance, no fooling! D'ye think it was the Gunner's battle-scarred face which hypnotized


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 me? No! It was what it says under his picture—'Champion of the World!' Judy, with that as my signature I could die happy. Champion of the world at boxing, brick-laying, street digging, anything, but—champion!"

Judy just sits there staring at me with her lips parted, them heart-stimulating eyes the bit misty and a kind of far-away and long-ago expression in 'em. I gaze at her and do a piece of wishing which would make Aladdin's requests look like the lamp was wasted on him. I get a grip on myself quick, you can bet, because I'm afraid another minute of this pause and I'll be kissing her sure and she'll toss me right out of her sweet young life! I figure she's weakening on the boxing argument, however, so I change the subject with break—your-neck speed.

"Well, I'm certainly a sap for the ages, Judy," I says suddenly. "I got a real surprise for you and I come near walking out without saying a word about it! Speaking of going in business, as people will, me and Nate and Kayo Kelly has already took a flyer in something apart from the ring. Laugh that off!"

She comes back to Mother Earth with a start and claps her hands together, plenty excited. "Splendid!" she says. "What is it, Gale?"

"We've pooled fifty thousand cash between us," I explain. "And we're going to buy a lot here in Drew City. Right on top of that lot we're going to throw together a little small office building with a moving-picture theatre downstairs. That gives us a ace in the hole should anything happen to any one or all of us in


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 the science we're in now. So, as a matter of fact, I'll be 50 per cent business man and 50 per cent box fighter, till the time comes when I'm 100 per cent business man and only go to a fight club as a witness."

"Which I hope will be soon!" says Judy, now all smiles again. "I certainly think it's wonderful that you've actually gone into-business, Gale, even if you're only going to devote part of your time to it. I'll wager you'll soon get so interested in making your new venture a success that you'll give up boxing without a qualm. This is the best news I've heard in many a day. Congratulations and the best of luck to you!"

"Much obliged, Judy," I says. "And now I wonder if you'd do me a favor?"

"I'll do anything for you that I can, Gale," she tells me. "You know that."

"Well," I says, "when we get our movie theatre all set, would you mind—eh—would you mind christening it for us for good luck?"

"Why, I'll be delighted!" she tells me—and looks it. "Let's think up a real attractive name—one that will be striking and descriptive of the theatre, too. Let's see, your theatre should be a delight to the eye, physically, and a delight to the soul, spiritually. Now I wonder just what name would describe that?"

"I got the name which fits that description like the skin fits a olive," I says. "We'll call the theatre 'The Judith'!"

Judy gasps and her face gets redder than a rose, only it looks much prettier.


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 "Oh, Gale," she stammers, "I—why—you can't call it that—You're joking—I"

"I ain't joking," I says, firmly, "and that's what we're going to call it. I don't see why you should holler about me naming my theatre after you, if you really like me as a friend—or maybe that's the bunk?"

"I do like you, Gale," says Judy, "but naming your theatre. The Judith would be too—obvious. Drew City is small and narrow in many ways, Gale, and people would misunderstand. There'd be talking that would embarrass both of us—linking our names, you know, and"

"If you think any talk linking our names would embarrass me, Judy," I butt in, "you're muchly mistaken. It would tickle me so silly, I'd put the gossips on my payroll! Say—if our names was only"

I see the crimson flooding her face again and there's a light in her eye which I don't know for sure is pleasure or rage. Not knowing for sure, I beat it.

Well, for the next three or four weeks I'm busier than a armless sailor furling a sail in a storm. Putting through the deal for our lot and arranging the details of my fight with Gunner Slade certainly keeps me from yawning myself to death and that's a fact. Then one day I'm passing the Dempster & Company carpet factory and I get the shock of my young life when I see Rags coming out of his father's office. As his old man had chased him out of town I was naturally the bit surprised to see him back in Drew City again.

"Hello, Galen," he calls out, like we was old pals, "How's Judy?"


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 I don't give him a tumble, but just keep on walking, though him merely mentioning Judy gets me red-headed. Still, Rags is determined to get a rise out of me. I guess he figured he was pretty safe on the main street in broad daylight, with pedestrians conspicuous by their presence. So he stands on the steps of the office and sneers.

"Afraid to answer, eh? That's right, you'd better keep your place. We'll see whether or not this town will stand for a drunken pugilist running a theatre here!"

Wam—I'm fit to be tied! I suppose I should of smacked him down then and there and be done with it, but you want to remember that fighting is my business and it ain't Rags's by no means. In other words, I can step and he can't so to my mind clouting him would be about as brave a stunt for me as removing a lolly-pop from a young infant. But I can't get over him being back in Drew City and I'm bothered about him knowing I'm going to open this theatre, so I walk away, wondering how in the Kansas City did he ever find that out? A few days later I got the dope on that part of it and it hit me like a smack on the chin!

During the week I hear that Rags's old man has gave him another chance and took him back to work in the office of his carpet factory. Immediately, his old gang forgives and forgets, too, because you know yourself a million dollars will get attention anywheres no matter where you roam and a million is what Rags's father is supposed to have. I seen Rags a couple of times more and once he actually tries to make


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 "friends" with me. You know what I told him. He also calls Judy up either eighteen or twenty-seven times, but I'm glad to state that Rags could of got the wrong number as far as he was concerned.

Well, with Rags bounding around in Drew City I know it won't be long before he'll start after my scalp again—and it wasn't long! His first number was to ruin me at the Drew City Country Club, where I had the chance of a lifetime to step out with the class of the town, assisted by Spence Brock. That's a thing I was crazy to do, as the farther away I could get from the atmosphere of the prize ring when I wasn't actually in it and the higher I could climb on the social ladder in Drew City, the more chance I had of rubbing off the rough edges which I knew would have to be rubbed off if I was going to get anywheres. Anyways, Spence had been after me for a long while to come out to the country club with him and try my hand at this golf thing. I'd been putting the event off, because I always thought that in order to properly appreciate the mysteries of cross-country billiards you had to be sixty, a bank president, bald-headed, fat, and a little bit goofy.

However, I would do anything for Spence, so one day we gaily set forth for the courts, or links, or gridiron, or whatever it is you smack them little white pills around on. When we get out to the country club right off the reel we run into Rags. He's out on what you call the first tea, practicing shots. The minute he sees me, he ties in.

"What's the big idea?" he says to Spence, pointing


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 to me with his club like I'm something the cat dragged in. I commence to get steamed myself.

"The idea is that Galen and myself are about to play a round of golf," says Spence coldly. "Any objections?"

Rags gives a whinny of rage. "I should say I have an objection!" he snaps, his piggy little eyes glaring at me, though he speaks to Spence. "I shall see that the house committee is immediately notified of this fellow's presence here. This is a gentleman's club, not a training camp for prize fighters!"

Before Spence can play a card. I climbed into the breech.

"Be yourself, you false alarm!" I says, stepping over to Rags and returning his glare with usurious interest. "Just because I been letting you push me around all this time without giving you a smacking, don't get the idea that things is going on this way forever. Some day I will take a wallop at you and everything I owe you for all you've ever did to me will be in that one punch!"

"And—eh—he's light-heavyweight champion, Rags," remarks Spence, with a grin.

Rags looks thoughtful indeed and moves away, growling under his breath like all hounds does.

Well, me and Spence ties into this golf. Spence puts his ball on the tea, takes a couple of practice swings, and then—blam! He hits what would of been at least one home run in any ball park in the world. I'm up next. I don't want to show off or nothing like that, but as I step up to the tea I can't help think-


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 ing to myself that what I'll do to this little pock-marked apple will be murderous. I took aim at a tree about a mile away, set myself, and—flooey. I don't even get a foul! Once again I try my luck and miss from here to Madrid. Spence laughs. Different here! Well, to make a long game short, on the eighth swing I finally connected with everything I got and the ball rolled about four feet from the tea. Then I got interested!

A half hour later I am playing this game like not only my life, but the future of the world depended on each stroke. And, listen—golf is considerable pastime, don't think it ain't. Anybody which calls it a old man's game is dizzy! It's a wow of a sport and wonderful as a training stunt for a boxer. Besides great exercise, if you put your heart and soul in it you'll get back cool-headedness, patience, steady nerves, and determination, just what you need to get to the top in the fight game—or in any game, for that matter!

When we come to what they call the fourth hole I have run up the praiseworthy score of twenty-five strokes for the first three, while the best Spence can do is fourteen strokes and he's been playing the game for years. However, I'm first to bat at cavity number four and by dumb luck I cracked the pill on the nose with my first swing. As I look up to see have I hit safe or not, I notice Rags down near the flag watching me. I ain't bothered about Rags, though, I'm thinking what a swell time I'm going to have capering around this course every day, mixing with the blue


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 bloods of Drew City and calling millionaires by nicknames. I'm even going to buy the golfing uniform and a container full of clubs and some caddies to put the tea in. Oh, I'm in right, what I mean, when out of the clear sky Rags winds up my happy little dream.

The ball I hit sails through the air at a bad angle and heads for the State road which runs past the course. There's a swell limousine buzzing along the road and me and Spence holds our breath for fear my ball will hit it. Rags is watching it, too. But my ball drops in a bunker hill this side of the road and I'm just letting go a sigh of honest relief when I see Rags stoop down, pick something up off the ground at his feet and pitch it at that limousine, breaking one of the windows! Then he takes it on the run as the car grinds to a stop.

I come running up to the road for my ball with my club in my hand and I'm looking for the pellet when the bozo from the limousine reaches me. He's fat and bald-headed and his face is as red as a throwing tomato. Honest, he's so mad he ain't fit to be at large! He's got a golf ball in his hand and he holds it up, waving it at the broken window of his limousine. The next point of interest he shows me with his quivering finger is a lump as big as Manhattan on the side of his noble forehead. I bet if he'd had a gun he'd of cooked me sure!

This is a situation which calls for some fast and spellbinding talking, yet what mind I got with me is occupied in realizing what Rags has just did and awarding him the china sledge hammer for brain


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318 noble queen. And if this still may be, how well will I requite you of that which he hath done you! Let him not suffer, because ye see him stand here bound.”

She bade Hagen then be led away to duress, where he lay locked in and where none did see him. Gunther, the high-born king, began to call: “Whither went the knight of Berne? He hath done me wrong.”

At this Lord Dietrich went to meet him. Gunther's might was worthy of praise; no more he bided, but ran outside the hall, and from the clashing of the swords of the twain a mighty din arose. However much and long Lord Dietrich’s prowess had been praised, yet Gunther was so sorely angered and enraged, for because of the grievous dole, he was his deadly foe, that men still tell it as a wonder, that Sir Dietrich did not fall. Great were both their prowess and their strength. The palace and the towers resounded with the blows, when with the swords they hewed at the sturdy helmets. King Gunther was of lordly mood, but the knight of Berne overcame him, as happed to Hagen afore. The hero’s blood was seen to ooze through the armor rings, drawn forth by a keen-edged sword, the which Sir Dietrich bare. Though weary, Sir Gunther had guarded him most valiantly. The lord was now bound by Dietrich’s hands. Though kings should not endure such bonds, yet Dietrich thought, if he set free the king and his liegeman, that all they met must needs fall dead at their hands.

Dietrich of Berne now took him by the hand and led him bound to where he found Kriemhild. At sight of his sorrow much of her fear took flight. She spake: “Welcome, Gunther, from the Burgundian land.”


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 work. This baby seen me hit that ball of the course and he immediately hurls his own ball through the limousine window, thus making it look like I drove it through! And now here I am with my club in my hand looking for the ball and nobody else in sight. Rags has gone away from there and Spence is far back at the tea, not knowing what it's all about.

Well, I'd have to be more of a dumbell than I am not to see at a glance that the real story of this accident would sound so silly to the enraged victim that he'd probably take my club away from me and brain me! I wouldn't even believe my own story myself. I'm covered from head to foot with circumstantial evidence and that's all there is to it. So without mentioning Rags at all I merely commence to stutter a apology, when the old jazzbo shuts me off kind of angrily. Then comes the toughest blow of all. This guy is chairman of the house committee, and when he finds out I ain't even a member of the country club he rules me off his golf court for life. In fact, he says if he ever catches me scampering around the greens again he'll have me hung for trespassing!

I think if I had come across Rags when me and Spence is wending our ways home from the country club that day I would of made him the plot of a coroner's inquest and that's a fact! I even took a long cut home so's not to run into him, as a murder wouldn't fit into my program right then by no means. But after I have talked to Nate Shapiro that night I wanted to go out looking for Rags and I ain't even got one qualm left about manslaughter.


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 My two business partners, Nate and Knockout Kelly, is sitting gloomily in the parlor when I come in. "Ah, the master mind has arrived!" says Nate, sarcastically. "Well, I got one for you to try on your piano—the deal for the lot has fell through and our movie theatre is canceled!"

"Laugh that off!" adds Kayo Kelly.

"Boys," I says, "I am in no mood for horseplay—get me? I have just got a tough break and if you start a kidding bee with me I'll lay you both like a carpet!"

"You think you just got a tough break," says Nate grimly. "But you're mistaken. We got the tough break right here for you. Listen—I go up to 'at real-estate agent with the jack to take over our lot to-day and they's nothin' stirrin'! No can do. Somebody's put in a rap for us and the owner ain't goin' through with the sale!"

"Why?" I asks, mystified to death.

At's what I asked the agent," says Nate. "And this tomato tells me the owner didn't know he was doin' business with a combination of box fighters, and now that he does, why, he don't think me and you and Kayo here should be encouraged to stay in Drew City, much less open a business in this slab. Can you tie that?"

"I went right up in flames!" says Knockout Kelly. And I can imagine he did.

"Well, Kayo," I says, "I hope you kept your head and didn't begin swearing and cursing in that agent's office, because that's just the thing would make


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 it harder for me to straighten this out. We don't want 'em to think we're rough and tough, even if we are boxers. A gentlemanly answer would of probably swung the tide in our favor."

"Everything's O. K. then," grins Kayo. "I didn't do a particle of swearin' or cussin'—by a odd coincidence, I simply stepped in and knocked that wisecrackin' agent for a horse radish!"

I just throwed up my hands and sunk in a chair. "Who is this owner?" I says finally. "Maybe I can make him see things in a different light."

"Sure!" sneers Nate. "And maybe Niagara Falls is composed of lemonade. The owner is Rags Dempster's old man!"

Hot tamale!

Well, we were up against a serious proposition and no mistake. Not having the faintest of faint ideas that there would be any trouble about the lot since we already had a option on it, we have went ahead with builders, architects, decorators, contractors, and the etc., and you know all that costs important money. If the deal for this lot fell through then, why, we stood to lose a fortune!

But this is one time I made Mr. Rags Dempster like it! I didn't bother going to his father. I knew that would be the same as appealing to the sense of fair play in a famished lion outside a sheep corral. I went right straight to my guardian angel, Mr. John T. Brock, and the best street in the burg ain't called "Brock Avenue" for nothing! By the time I got done telling Mr. Brock what's what he's as burnt up


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 as I am. By way of the phone he calls a special meeting of the chamber of commerce for the next morning. He's just president of it, that's all. Then he pats me on the back, tells me if I let Gunner Slade stay six rounds he'll be ashamed of me, and says to show up at the chamber of commerce the following morning with my two partners and the money for the lot.

Well, the chamber of commerce meeting was a movie. Besides a lot of influential citizens which I have only a nodding acquaintance with and the nodding is all on my part, there was Lem Garfield, Judge Tuckerman, and Ajariah Stubbs, all with me to the limit in anything at that time. The rest of the heavy business men frowns at me and my partners, but they regard Mr. Brock like he was President Harding. All except old man Dempster, which hurls us a angry glare to split among us.

Mr. Brock wastes no time on preliminaries, but gets right down to business when the meeting is called to order.

"What's all this nonsense I heard about driving this young man out of town?" he bellers in his bull elephant's voice, looking straight at old man Dempster. "A detriment to Drew City, is he? Why, you fools, Gale Galen is the biggest thing this town has ever produced! He's put Drew City on the map and if you meddling idiots will let him alone he'll keep it there. Do you know who he is? A prize fighter, I suppose some doddering imbecile will say. Well, he's not just a prize fighter, any more than U. S. Grant was just a general! He's American light-heavyweight champion


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 and I'll wager anything from one penny to one million he'll soon be champion of the world. Do you know what that means? It means columns and columns of priceless publicity for Drew City. Every time his name is printed in a newspaper in the United States, Drew City is mentioned beside it. People who never heard of our town and never would hear of it unless it was destroyed by an earthquake, now know that Drew City is the home of a champion and everybody is interested in a champion of anything!"

"But—" begins old man Dempster.

"Silence!" yells about a dozen voices.

"Not only that," goes on Mr. Brock—"not only that, this boy has set an example during his residence here that should be held up as a model for the youth of this town! Honest, ambitious, courageous, intelligent, and clean living, fighting for an education denied him through poverty. He came here penniless, unknown, an object of suspicion. Look at him now! Why, he could buy and sell half of you hypocrites in this room! If he wants to go into business here, he should be encouraged and assisted, and if this young man is refused the deed to a certain lot I understand he holds an option on and is now ready to purchase as a site for his proposed enterprise, I will resign from this board right now!" He bangs on the desk and glares around the room. "Well, come on, I'm ready to hear arguments!" he bellers.

Well, there was plenty arguments—but they're all in my favor. Them babies don't wish none of Mr. Brock's game, that's a cinch! Inside half a hour old


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 man Dempster has sold us his lot without further ado.

The building of our movie theatre proceeds with the greatest of speed and a couple of months later Gunner Slade arrives in America, so I got to go in training for him. The sport writers look Mr. Slade over and then go back to their papers and open up with their typewriters on him. He looks big and husky, they say, but then so does a plate of corned beef and cabbage and they think in justice to the American fight fans he should give them a line on his wares before going up against the best fighter of his class in the country. The Gunner and his manager stalls and stalls, but finally they got to talk turkey. So they take on Battling Hicks over in Jersey City to give the fans a drummer's sample of what they got in stock. I went over with Nate and Knockout Kelly for a eyeful myself.

Battling Hicks was a tough boy in his day, but his day was all over. While he was still a fairly clever boxer, he couldn't punch his way out of a paper bag. I stopped him myself some time ago with a couple of smacks on the chin. He was scared stiff by the Gunner's rep and it turned out to be the sorriest kind of a set-up, only lasting two frames because Gunner Slade was nervous and wild. I came away from that fight more than ever convinced that I held the light-heavyweight championship of the world in my right-hand glove!

Well, the hard-boiled sport writers failed to wax hysterical over Gunner Slade's showing, in spite of the fact that he stopped his man in two rounds. They commence to predict that I'll murder him, till I could of murdered them for what they're doing to the gate


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 receipts of my coming brawl with the Englishman. I guess the Gunner must be quite a newspaper reader, because after seeing what the reporters thought of him he demands more time to get in better shape for me and there's nothing for me to do but give him what he wants. So in that way the time goes by till finally our three-story building is built and the movie theatre on the ground floor is solemnly christened the "Judith" by Judy herself. Her objections vanished like magic when she seen what a cute little trap it was.

Then me, Judy, Spence, Nate, and Kayo Kelly hold a conference for the purposes of doping out some stunt which will open our theatre with a bang. Everybody is called upon to trot out a publicity scheme—a trick which will pack the customers in on the opening night. Knockout Kelly coughs and says he has a wow of a idea and there's no use looking no further for something which will jam the place to the mortgage. I give Kayo permission to take the floor and expose his scheme and Kayo says its very simple—just make Mary Ballinger cashier of the theatre and then try to keep the mob away from the box office!

When the laugh has died away the motion is voted on and Mary gets the job. She's a swell looker at that, and thinks Kayo, which is not no swell looker but is certainly a handsome puncher, is a better man than even Gunga Din. But merely putting Mary in the box office as a decoy ain't just what we're after, so I order more thinking and finally it was no less than me which gets the fatal idea. That is, to open our theatre with a little amateur playlet, put on by local talent. That's


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 sure to bring in at least the friends and relatives of the young actors, and if we give 'em a good show we'll make 'em permanent customers and boosters.

Judy and Spence thinks my idea is the peacock's knuckles, and even them two ten-minute eggs, Nate and Kayo, gives grudging approval. I leave the details to Spence and Judy, as I have got to ready up for my own little playlet with Gunner Slade in which I hope to play the leading part and I need plenty rehearsals for that drama myself!

Well, when Spence pulls the amateur theatrical thing on his girl and boy friends they go double cuckoo over it and there's so many applications that we could of put on Custer's Last Stand and had sixteen more principals than there was in the battle itself. Strangely enough, all the boys want to play the hero and all the girls is strongly in favor of playing the heroine and when I see the trouble Spence and Judy is having trying to keep old friendships and still put the play on, why, I'm glad I'm merely a silent partner in the production. Spence solves the difficulty by sending to New York for a professional director which plays no favorites but picks out for the parts the ones he thinks best suited for 'em and advises the others to buy tickets.

If I had a dollar for every time I have wished I never thought of opening my theatre with a amateur show, there's no sixty banks in the world would be big enough to hold my jack. Battling Luck delivered three punches at me as the net result of that play which cost me a young fortune and come mighty near costing me Judy, the world's championship, and my life!


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 Punch number one is when the director picks out Rags and Judy for the leading parts in the play. That floored me, but I got up. Punch number two is when Judy comes into dinner from rehearsal one night, all excited and acting like she's just got word that a rich uncle died and left her everything but Baffin's Bay. I ask her what seems to be the trouble, and after stalling a bit she finally says the director has told her she's a born actress and is throwing herself away by staying in Drew City. What she should do, this parsnip tells her, is to go to New York, where he's satisfied her talent will get her attention. I leave it to you what this done to me!"

"The big stiff!" I says. "I suppose he likewise asked you could he call on you some night and give you more details about going on the stage in New York, hey? I'll go around there and slap him silly!"

"You'll do nothing of the sort!" says Judy, flaring right up. "Mr. De Haven is a perfect gentleman and I think it's wonderful he should take such an interest in me!"

"Ain't we got fun?" I says, fit to bite nails. "What did you tell him when he invited you to bust into the show business?"

"Don't cross-examine me, Gale," says Judy. "I said I would think it over. I certainly don't intend to be a stenographer all my life!"

"I don't expect you to be one all your life, either, Judy." I says. "But please don't go on the stage. That would just about murder me, no fooling! Why, the mere thought of you being a actress is"


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 "Just a moment!" Judy butts in, giving me a odd look. "Do you think it any worse for me to become an actress than it is for you to be a pugilist? I don't!"

I'm against the ropes for a fact and before I get a chance to box my ways out, in comes Mrs. Willcox to tell Judy Mr. De Haven would like to speak to her on the phone. Wam! That adds the finishing touch and I bust out of the house without no dinner or nothing. What a fine break I got all of a sudden! Rags Dempster playing the hero to Judy's heroine in a play I'm paying for, and the director, whose salary I'm also putting up, is stuck on Judy, too. If I had run into both of them birds when I left the house that night there would of been two of the niftiest killings you ever seen in your life!

Now for punch number three, the one which goaled me. The night our theatre opens you couldn't of got inside after seven-thirty p. m. if you had been a thin fly. In fact, me and Nate and Kayo Kelly has got to stand up in the back, as they seems to be two people in each seat. We hire Eddie Granger's Vesper A. brass band, paying them famine prices, but they was worth it, because while Eddie is no Sousa they sure did horn a mean overture! Then up goes the curtain and the drama is on.

Well, everything moved along smoothly, though some of these synthetic actors is a little nervous at being right up there on the stage for all the world to look at. But they are going over big with their parents, anyways, which is there in evening clothes and keeps constantly nudging each other with pride and the etc.


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 Judy never looked better and I guess that director was right, for, honest, she made the rest of 'em look like so many clowns. Rags is in his glory, strutting around like he's the Duke of Diphtheria or something, on the account he's playing the hero of this frolic. Two or three times when he catches my eye he sneers out over the footlights like it was part of the play. This is gradually getting me rosy, but when he has to put his arms around Judy in one of the scenes you could hear my teeth grit in far-off Siberia!

Then some devil must of got into Rags's brain, where they is already a congress of demons. He glances over his shoulder at me and deliberately prolongs this part where he's got his arms around Judy, bending over to kiss her. Judy looks surprised and then frightened and starts backing away across the stage with Rags after her. Everybody else seems to think this is in the play, but somehow I don't! At this critical point, Mary Ballinger, which is standing next to Kayo Kelly, whispers:

"Rags must be crazy! I saw all the rehearsals and that's never in the play. Look how scared Judy is!"

That's ample for me and I am starting up to the stage, when Judy backs into a table on which there is a lamp. Rags makes a grab for her and over goes table and lamp with a crash.

Then the panic is on!

The flimsy draperies went up like celluloid, and before I have battled my ways half the distance to the footlights through the yelling, stampeding mob, the stage is a roaring furnace. Nate grabs wildly at my


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 coat to hold me back, but I shook him off. I also shook off a couple of gents which has went fear-crazy and wants to climb through the roof, using a couple of women for ladders. Short right and left hooks discouraged them babies and in another minute I am on the stage with Judy. She's trying to drag out some girl which has fainted away in a swoon.

Rags Dempster, the hero of the play, has disappeared and so has all the other brave actors. I got Judy outside and I got to snatch her up and carry her out bodily, because she refuses to leave the young lady which is peacefully sleeping on the floor. I went back and got the fainting beauty and also Mrs. Willcox and then I just took 'em as they come, this time with the kind assistance of Knockout Kelly, Nate, Lem Garfield, and a couple of other guys which figured what's a few burns between friends? After a while Engine Company No. 6 arrived, and as long as they was there they figured they might as well put out the fire, so that's what they done.

Our brand-new stage, movie screen, curtains, and all this sort of thing was simply burned out of existence—quite some financial loss and don't think it wasn't! But the toughest break of all for me was the place I got burned. Just imagine what would happen to Katherine MacDonald if her face got burned, or John McCormack if his throat got burned, and you'll get the idea of what it means when I tell you I got badly burned on the things which is my fortune—my hands! They're just a puffed mass of raw blisters and in less than three weeks I got to step into the ring


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 with Gunner Slade and fight for a world's championship.

Well, we manage to keep the thing out of the New York papers, which is one place I don't want it, or there will be nobody show up to see a fight in which one guy is going into the ring with his hands all shot to pieces. Nate fells out the Gunner's pilot on a postponement without letting him know why we'd like one, but there's no chance. For some reason or other Gunner Slade has a longing to return to merry England and he says if the fight don't come off as scheduled he'll beat it back, taking with him my ten-thousand-dollar appearance forfeit. I've had about all the losses I can take, so over Nate's frantic protests I decide to go through with the battle on the advertised date.

One look at the crowd as I climb through the ropes on the night of the quarrel is enough to convince me I'm going deeper into the hole by promoting this International carnival of assault and battery. When I pay Gunner Slade his hundred thousand guarantee and look after the other expenses, about all I'll get for my end will be a punch in the nose. The big gaps of empty seats here and there is the answer to the sport writers' stories that Gunner Slade will be a spread for me. If them babies only knew the shape my hands was in as I sit in my corner waiting for the opening bell, why, they wouldn't of been yawning and looking around and acting like they wished they was somewheres else! And if Gunner Slade only knew that Nate had to lance the blisters to tape my hands—well, can you imagine how happy that guy would of felt?


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 I'll pass over the pain I suffered every time I tried to close the gloves on my raw hands and the pain I suffered every time I looked at them empty seats and realized what they meant to my bankroll. It seems to me then that just about the time I started to get somewheres, I always get floored for the count and I'm gloomily wondering am I one of these birds which is born to run second? Well, I chase them thoughts out of my mind. After all, the money's a small thing. I can always get more—anybody can. What I devote my tumbling thoughts to is that no matter what I've lost, I've still got the opportunity of my life in front of me—a chance to become champion of the world at my trick. All I got to do is to knock this glowering English scrapper kicking. Sounds easy, but believe me, it was quite a stunt!

We both stepped out smartly at the bell and I led first to get it over with. My glove socked against Gunner Slade's nose and I nearly fainted with the pain which shot up my arm to the shoulder. It wasn't a stiff punch, either, just a mild left lead, but it was enough to show me that nothing but a miracle could make me knock the Gunner cold with the hands I got with me that night. I then begin to box very cautious, and, the mob which expected to see me sail into Slade and send 'em home early, gets highly indignant and razzes me to a fare-thee-well. The Gunner takes heart from my pacifist tactics and gets down to business himself. He drove me half-ways across the ring with a wicked right to the head which didn't do me a bit of good and when I merely crouched, covered up, and


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 commenced to take it, the crowd goes wild. "Fight, you big stiff!" and "Fake! Fake! Fake!" is just a sample of the choice remarks which greets me on all sides. The least said about the opening frame, the better. I didn't take two punches at Gunner Slade and it must of been fearful to look at!

Round two was a duplicate of the first inning. Gunner Slade made a punching bag out of me, and the customers called me names which will never make me stuck on myself. Toward the end of the round the ringside comment got under my skin and I come out of my shell long enough to crash the surprised Gunner against the ropes with a right and left to the jaw. How them two socks felt to Mr. Slade I don't know, but I do know that the pain from that pair of punches with my burned hands brought the water in streams from my eyes and give me a feeling in the pit of my stomach like when you go down in a fast elevator. I immediately went back on the defensive again, unable to follow up my advantage and finish him. The crowd had leaped on the seats when I opened up, now they sank back with groans and hisses. When I run to my corner at the bell I got the same kind of a reception that puss gives Rover.

Gunner Slade come out for the third round with a rush and sent me back on my heels with a poisonous straight left. He then hooked the same glove to my heart and whoever says them English scrappers can't hit is liars. This baby had a kick like two healthy mules! The mob roars when a right and left uppercut bends my knees and the Gunner com-


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 mences to swing 'em from the floor, thinking it's all over.

The boys which has laid four and five to one on me to win by a knockout is screaming madly for me to take at least one punch at the Gunner and not act like a sheep in a slaughter house. I'm all at sea from the punishment I'm taking and the razzing, and in dancing away from one of Slade's wild haymakers I slipped to the canvas on my back, hitting my head with enough force to daze me for a second. The attendance thinks I been knocked stiff and you should of heard 'em. Like the steady roar of a record rain on a tin roof! I took "seven" and got up groggy. Nate yells for me to clinch, but the Gunner beat me to it with a terrible right swing to the pit of the stomach which drops me on my haunches for a clean knockdown. I am a very sick young man when the blessed gong stopped hostilities for that round.

Nate is like a wild man as he drenches me with the water bucket. He rushes over to the referee and begins a argument about Gunner Slade's gloves, demanding that they be examined. Nate knows that their ain't a thing in the world the matter with the Englishman's gloves: what he wants to do is give me a few extra seconds to come back to life. I needed a few years, not a few seconds! This Gunner Slade has cuffed and smacked me till I don't know what it's all about. While the referee and Kayo Kelly is examining the smiling Gunner's gloves, Nate slips back to me and begins to unlace my right glove with feverish haste. Before I can stop him, he pulls a hypodermic syringe


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 from his pocket and jabs the needle a mile in the side of my throbbing hand.

"Listen!" he pants in my ear. At's cocaine, get me? It'll start to work in a minute and if they cut your arm off you wouldn't feel a thing! Go out there now and swap wallops with this big tramp. I don't think he can take it and if he could hit he'd of stopped you long ago, because he's already slapped you with everything but the bell. Go on now, kid, do your stuff!"

As the gong rung, Nate turns and hands the hypodermic syringe down to a newspaper man which has been watching all this with the greatest of surprise.

Well, I'm a new man when I jump off my stool for the fourth round. With my hand cocained, I figure I'm free to tie into the Gunner and that's what I done! I ducked his straight left and sunk my right under his heart with everything I got behind it and you never seen such a painfully astonished guy in your life. I think that one punch licked Gunner Slade, because his return, skidding off my ear, felt to me like the cuff of a playful kitten. Another torrid right down below opened him up, and while the crowd is still going nutty over the remarkable change which has suddenly come over me, I hooked him flush on the jaw with the same glove. He staggered back against the ropes, floundering around like a drunken man. His seconds shrieked for him to dive into a clinch and I grinned at 'em over my shoulder, measured Slade with a light left and then shot my right at his bobbing jaw. He went down like a German mark and down is where he stayed!


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 The Gunner's manager and handlers swarm into my corner, yelling something it's hard to hear over the continual roar of the crowd. We finally find out that one of Gunner Slade's seconds seen Nate give me the hypodermic and they're claiming the fight on a foul. Nate bends down and gets back the syringe from the newspaper guy he give it to. Then he hands it to a doctor which has been boosted into the ring.

At's plain warm water in that hypo," says Nate carelessly to the interested reporters. "Nothin' else! The doc will tell you as soon as he tests it. If I want to give my man water between rounds, I can do it. I knew if my battler thought he was gettin' cocaine which would soon stop the pain, he'd sail into this Englishman and drop him. 'At's what he done! I kidded him out of 'at pain, I didn't dope him. I keep my eyes open. I see 'em do that same trick once with a. They tell him he's gettin' morphine and he got water, but it works O. K. on this guy for a couple of minutes. I thought they'd be no harm in tryin' the same gag here—'at's all!"

Kayo Kelly has got my gloves off and Nate holds my hands up. They look like a couple of overripe tomatoes and if you don't think they're painful—just burn your hands once!

"Good Heavens, look at his hands!" gasps the sport writer from the "Sphere." "And he knocked Slade out with 'em!" he almost whispers.

"He got 'at in a fire; I'll give you the dope as soon as the doc here fixes up them hands," says Nate. Then


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 he bends over me. They must hurt like hell, don't they, kid?" he says anxiously.

What do I care if they hurt or not? I'm light-heavyweight champion of the world!


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Rh Quoth he: “I would how before you, dear sister mine, if your greetings were but kinder. I know you, queen, to be so wroth of mood that ye do give me and Hagen meagre greetings.”

Up spake the knight of Berne: “Most noble queen, never were such good knights made hostages, as I have given you in them, exalted lady. For my sake, I pray you, spare these homeless men.”

She vowed she’d do it gladly. Then Sir Dietrich left the worshipful knights with weeping eyes. Later Etzel’s wife avenged her grimly; she took the life of both the chosen heroes. To make their duress worse she let them lie apart, so that neither saw the other, till she bare her brother’s head to Hagen. Kriemhild’s vengeance on both was great enow.

Then the queen went to Hagen. In what right hostile wise she spake to the knight: “If ye will give me back what ye have taken from me, then ye may still go home alive to Burgundy.”

Grim Hagen answered: “Thou dost waste thy words, most noble queen. Forsooth I have sworn an oath, that I would not show the hoard, the while and any of my lords still live; so I shall give it to none.”

“I’ll make an end of this,” quoth the high-born wife. Then she bade her brother's life be taken. His head they struck off, and by the hair she bare it to the knight of Troneg. Loth enow it was to him. When sad of mind the warrior gazed upon his master’s head, he spake to Kriemhild: “Thou hast brought it to an end after thy will, and it hath happed, as I had thought me. The noble king of Burgundy now lieth dead, and Giselher, the youth, and Sir Gernot, too. None know-


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other night I am wrestling with "Paradise Lost," a novel by Johnny Milton. It's one of the stories Judy picked out for me to read, so it must mean something, but between you and me and Kemal Pasha I can't make head or tail out of it and that's a fact! It's all poetry and, to make it harder, none of it rimes. I wouldn't be surprised if it ain't a little too rich for my blood yet, hey? That's been one of my greatest troubles—separating the stuff which will help me and the stuff which won't from the mass of volumes I am studying. I been taking learning in mass formation, devouring books like "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Art of Embalming" in the same day, and that last one is hard to work into the average conversation, what I mean!

Well, knocking out Gunner Slade for the light-heavyweight crown I realized one of the greatest ambitions of my life—I went to the top in the game I was in. I was a world's champion! Even though I hadn't picked boxing as my life work, the fact that I was king in my division gave me more satisfaction than I can put down here on paper. It's a hobby of mine to


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Rh represent his county in the House of Delegates. This was in the autumn of 1780, when he was only nineteen years of age. He had made no canvass, and was in no true sense a candidate. His election was the result of one of those silent movements when men are brought, under the pressure of events, to select those who can best represent them, without regard to the much-pressed claims of office-seekers. No one could have been more surprised at his election than was John Breckinridge himself, but he cheerfully undertook the task imposed upon him, and set out for Williamsburgh. The House of Delegates, however, set aside the election on account of his youth, feeling, no doubt, that the choice was both unprecedented and out of place in a time so full of danger and demanding the most far-sighted counsels. But the hardy frontiersmen had not made their choice without being convinced of its wisdom, and promptly reelected Mr. Breckinridge. The house again set the election aside, and again the electors cast their ballots as before, and this time the election was acquiesced in, and the young student left his academic pursuits in the one part of the town, and took his seat in the council hall at the other.

The youngest in any body of men is apt to be the object of kindly interest to the older members, especially if he unites to ability and manliness, modesty and deference. Throughout the contest over his seat young Breckinridge had shown the qualities which raised him to eminence in after days, and as soon as he took his seat his quiet,


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 want to finish first in anything I try. Why, even if I fell off Washington's Monument my one wish on the way down would be that as long as I was going to hit the ground at all, I'd hit it so hard that it would stand as a record for all time!

After I have smacked Gunner Slade for a mock turtle, Judy reminds me of my vow to quit the ring and bust head first into the business world. I had stalled Judy and talked her out of this thing a million times before, but this time it was a showdown—I have to give up either Judy or the prize-ring, I can't have both!

To quit this game before I've even got used to seeing "World's Champion" beside my name was to me like climbing the highest mountain in the world, reaching the summit bruised and winded, and then deliberately jumping off before enjoying the view from the top. But Judy is—Judy! So while the sport writers is still commenting on my sensational victory over Gunner Slade and guessing who I'll battle next, I throwed a bombshell into their midst by announcing my retirement from the ring.

A lot of my friends thought this was just another one of my publicity stunts and they merely smiled, but it wasn't no publicity stunt, I was in dead earnest. When the sport writers find out I am not kidding, why, they laced into me with a gusto! One paper even said that the beating I had took from Gunner Slade before I slapped him double cuckoo had ruined me for life. Others roasted me to a fare-thee-well and let it go at that. All this stuff was fine for Mr. Gunner


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 Slade which immediately gets terrible rosey. This dizzy boloney squawks that he lost to me on a fluke punch, challenges me for a return bout, and when I don't answer he claims the light-heavyweight title. This makes me laugh, as I know I can take Gunner Slade every day in the week if necessary and I guess the Gunner knows it too, or else he's a fellow which is opposed to learning by experience.

However, there is one baby which don't get no merriment out of my leaving the ring and that's Nate Shapiro.

When Nate reads all that stuff in the New York papers he comes to me in a high rage.

"You wanna quit this clownin', kid," he says, waving a newspaper at me. "We got a quarter-million-dollar year starin' us right in the face and this applesauce you're givin' out about leavin' the ring is gettin' the promoters nervous—you ought to see the wires I got this mornin'. I been busy phonin' the New York papers for the last three hours, tellin' 'em your retirement is April Fool!"

"Nate, I am not clowning," I says, gently but firmly. "I have fought my last box fight, and that's all there is to it! I promised Judy I would call it a day when I win the light-heavyweight championship of the world. Well, I win it, so I'm through. Let's say it was a fool promise—all right, I made it and I got to keep it. Anyways, having won the title, what else is there for me to shoot at as a boxer?"

"What else is they for you to shoot at?" howls Nate, when he can talk. "They's a million dollars for you to


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 shoot at, you dumbell! Have you got so much jack that you can turn down a million without flickin' a muscle?"

"Shut up!" I growls. "Don't make me feel no worse than I already do. Maybe we can make a fortune out of our picture theatre."

"And maybe Lake Erie is a tennis court!" hollers Nate. "I know what's the matter with you, studyin' them books night and day has made you cuckoo! I warned you to lay off 'at stuff. What do you want with a education? The chances is if you'd of had one you'd be a chauffeur of a addin' machine in some guy's office now for about twenty-five bucks a week, instead of bein' able to click off that much a punch! Did you wade through these tomatoes to the championship simply so's you could have the pleasure of quittin' the ring the first chance you got to make money like they make it in the mint? I took you from behind a soda fountain and made you and the minute we both get a chance to collect heavy you throw me down!"

"I ain't throwing you down any more than I'm throwing myself down, Nate," I says. "But—a promise is a promise! If Judy"

"Let me talk to Miss Willcox," butts in Nate. "I bet she ain't got the slightest of slight ideas just what she's askin' you to give up. When I show her the dough we can take down in the next year, the chances is 'at not only will she want you to stay in the ring, but she'll expect you to go around pickin' fights in the streets!"

But she didn't, and after a four-day ceaseless attack


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 on her objections, Nate throwed up the sponge. Then he turned his attentions to me again and again he is thrown for a loss. I didn't want to quit the ring and toss away the jack I could make as a champ any more than I wanted to go to the hospital and have my ears cut off, but rather than lose Judy's friendship I'd give up anything! When Nate finds his threats and pleadings is useless, he gets maniacal with rage and tells me he's going to sell his interest in our picture theatre, check out of Drew City, and go back to live in New York, taking Kayo Kelly with him. That was a blow to me indeed, as I had come to look on Nate and Kayo as face cards in any man's deck. What I'll do if they both desert me was a fresh problem for my busy mind.

However, Knockout Kelly solved that for me himself in a short but highly interesting speech he made when Nate told him to pack his collars for the voyage to New York.

"No can do, Nate," says Kayo, shaking his head. "Me and this slab is gettin' along fine. I think I'll stick here with Gale and see what happens. Besides, the further away I stay from Broadway the better for all concerned. A married man ain't got no business steppin' out and"

"A married man!" yells Nate, grabbing Kayo by the shoulders. "And I thought you was blonde-proof! Have you went to work and wed somebody on me, you big sapolio?"

Kayo shakes himself loose. "Well, I ain't exactly a matrimaniac yet," he says, with a sickly grin. "But I will be in a few weeks. Me and Mary Ballinger has


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 signed articles for the popular finish fight! I'm a burn picker, hey?"

"You lucky stiff!" I says, shaking Kayo's hand. "Congratulations!"

"Mary's lucky too," says Kayo, calmly. "I ain't exactly what you could call a poor investment for no girl, Maybe I ain't no second Valentino, but Mary will never have to worry about where her next limousine is comin' from! I"

But then Nate has got his breath back and he whinneys with rage.

"Shut up, you ingrateful banana!" he cuts in. "Both you babies is givin' me a pushin' around, hey? Well, either of you try to fight for somebody else and you'll see twice as many lawyers as you thought they was in the business. I got you both sewed up to ironbound contracts, black on white, and if you think you can laugh that off, you're goofey!"

"Nate," says Kayo, laying his hand on our raging manager's arm, "nobody's got no intentions of boxin' for some other pilot. You got it all wrong. I'd part with my right arm in the middle of a fight if you wanted it and I know Gale would too. But—I'm gettin' along, Nate. I can still put the parsnips on the floor, but I ain't as burly as I used to be. The old wind ain't there and I can't take a pastin' like I used to could take one. What is they in this game for me any more but punishment? On the other hand, I got a bank roll, a interest in our theatre here, and the sweetest girl in the wide, wide world thinks I'm the snake's hips. What more could ask? Why, Nate, I


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 wouldn't go six inches away from this burg now! Something tells me that it ain't goin' to be no century before Gale here will be the biggest guy either of us knows. This baby's goin' to get over and don't think he won't. Well, I'm goin' to be with him when that day comes, because I figure that anybody which is with him will be a winner too!"

Nate's ready to tear his hair and I bet he could of got ten years for what he's thinking about both of us.

"But you got to mingle with Battlin' Murphy at Syracuse in a month!" he roars at Kayo, "how 'bout that?"

"I'll file Murphy's application," says Kayo, coolly, "I'm sittin' pretty here now, Nate, and to tell you the truth I don't care if I smack another guy in my life again or not! Anyways, Mary don't wish me all marked up for the weddin'."

"I fail to see what difference it would make whether you got marked up or not," sneers Nate. "You got a pan on you now like a gorilla!"

"Mary likes it!" grins Kayo. "No use, Nate, you can't even get me sore. If I was you, I'd grab myself off a nice little girl in this town and throw in with us. As Nero says when he burned Rome, 'It's all fun!' A married man can go twice as far as a bachelor."

"Twice as far in bad, in debt and insane!" snarls Nate. "I'm off both you bozos for life—get wed and be damned to you. I'm goin' to leave this trap and go to New York!"

But I'm glad to report that Mrs. Willcox prevailed on Nate to stick around and await further developments.


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 Well, along around this time the New York papers is full of nothing but the big merger Mr. Brock has brought about among the locomotive manufacturers with him at the head of the whole business. His pictuire is printed alongside of Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, and a couple of other fellows which has promising futures, and he's spoken of as one of the richest men in the world. When he comes back to Drew City from putting over that merger in New York, he gets a reception like a king gets—in a movie—and it tickles him silly. It seems millionaires is human beings, even as you and me. So he turns right around and makes the town a present of a quarter-million-dollar hospital and he couldn't of give them nothing more to the point, because the hospital they already had there wasn't equipped to handle nothing more serious than, say, dandruff or chapped hands.

Well, the day the corner stone was laid is a day me and Drew City won't forget for a long time. Mayor Baxter pronounces it a legal holiday and the whole burg turns out for the ceremonies. Eddie Granger's Vesper A. C. Brass Band had a field day, the streets is buried under flags and bunting and speeches flowed like water. The principal spellbinders, as usual, was Lem Garfield, and Judge Tuckerman. When they got through doing their stuff, Mr. Brock tied in. Then comes the big surprise of the day—to me anyways. I am sitting on the speaker's platform with Spence and Judy when Mr. Brock finishes his speech amid a tornado of applause. He turns around and sees me and a big smile spreads itself across his face. Then he nods


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 for me to come over to him. I can't imagine what he wants with me out there before all that crowd of mingled friends and enemies, but up I get and walk over while the mob looks on in astonishment. Mr. Brock lays one hand on my shoulder and holds up the other one for silence. He gets immediate service, like usual.

"Fellow citizens!" he says, in his booming voice. "I wish to bring to your notice the most interesting object in Drew City—Mr. Gale Galen. Yesterday a penniless, friendless, ambition-driven wanderer; today, world's champion light-heavyweight boxer with a modest fortune and a handsome income; to-morrow—who knows? Who can say to what heights this remarkable young man will go? He is still a mere boy, yet consider what he has already accomplished. You young men who are ambitious and determined to make your mark in the world, don't waste your precious time reading the lives of successful men written by flattering biographers, observe the progress of Gale Galen, use him as a living textbook, for one day you will be proud of having produced him in Drew City!"

Well, that's just a preliminary. He says a lot more about me, while my face gets so red I bet you could of saw the reflection a mile away. When he finishes, Spence stafts some applause which grows till it gets to what the "Daily Sentinel" the next day calls a ovation.

Mr. Brock's speech about me makes a awful hit with Spence, Judy, and her mother. They act as proud as if I had really did something to deserve all that praise