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 Once again he cuts me off, this time handin' me a cigar. "I'm Capato's manager!" he says coolly.

The cigar tumbled out of my hands on the floor and Dummy sit down and laughed out loud.

"Somethin' of a surprise party, hey?" he sneers. "Well, what's wrong about me buyin' Capato from Eddie Rainey—which is what I done?" He reaches in his pocket and flips me a paper. "There's the contract," he says. "As legal as snowballin' in Iceland. I told you I'd get me a boy which would bounce that cuckoo of yours—and I got him!"

Feelin' more at ease, I laid the contract on a table and took up the sport of grinnin' myself.

"Stop makin' me laugh!" I remarks. "Where's the matchmaker for the New Orleans abbattoir that's gonna stage the slaughter of your tramp?"

"Ah-heh!" coughs Dummy, knockin' the ash off his cigar. "Eh—I'm the matchmaker!"

Sweet Mamma!

"You're one terrible busy guy, ain't you?" I sneers, teachin' for my hat and gettin' up. "Well you got nothin' on me—so am I! The next time you wanna frame somebody, Dummy, get further out in the suburbs. I was pullin' off them kinda fights before you had wore out your first rattle. This here's gonna make a swell story for the sport writers to tie into—so long!"

"Sit down and don't be no stupider than you can help!" he snarls. "Did I ever strike you as bein' a hick? I got a business proposition to make you, durin' which time we'll forget our wild love for each other and let bygones be bygones. It's about the last chance we'll get to clean up, no matter if Capato knocks Kid Roberts

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 dead, or vice and versa. The way I look at it, there's fifty thousand for us to split, besides the crack one of us will get at the title. D'ye wanna listen?"

Well, I never claimed to be perfect!

A hour or so later I was on the en route back to my inn, buried in what is known as thought. They was nothin' new in Dummy's "business proposition"—it's bein' pulled off every day and will be pulled off as long as the boob birth rate continues to run sixty to the hour. Unless the admirers of boxin' as a sport go over it with a vacuum cleaner toot sweet and get rid of all the Dummy Carney's which is killin' the game whereever they sit in it, prize fightin' is due to get the raspberry over here as sure as they's a snowflake at the North Pole!

Here was Dummy's layout:

Kid Roberts and Tiger Capato which had already fought one level draw, was to pull off another one in this New Orleans burlesque. Whilst the hippodrome lasted it would be a wow of a scrap—knockdowns, sarcastic conversations, nasty glances, and even a little gore would be squandered if necessary, but, come what may, it was to be a "draw." Everybody, includin' the referee, would see to that part of it! Me and Dummy was to meet by "accident" in the sportin' editor's office of the biggest New Orleans paper before the thing and give that unsuspectin' young gent ten thousand berries apiece to hold, each bettin' that his man would cop by a knockout. This would help murder suspicion, besides gettin' the fight plenty of advertisin'. Twenty thousand bucks may not sound like so much, but laid down on the

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 table before you in fifty-dollar bills it looks like about twenty million. After the boys had "fought" their draw we'd both get back our sugar, of course, and the Kid and Capato was to be present when we collected. The Kid would then make some crack about bein' robbed of the decision and Capato would immediately make a pass at him. Then—wam! They'd both start mixin' it up, and have to be jimmied apart—all this, remember, before the delighted eyes of the sportin' editor. Would that little horseplay smoke up the return bout? Well, what do you think?

On the strength of the above drama the boys would be rematched then and there for a twenty-round open-air bout durin' the Mardy Grass week a month later. The town would be loaded with free-spendin' tourists, and the promoters figured on a fifty-thousand-berry gate if they got the breaks on the weather. This time it would be a up-and-up fight, and may the worst man lose!

Boiled down, the whole proposition was simply the time-worn scheme of drawin' two big crowds instead of one, the fact that the fans which paid their jack to see a fight in the first mill would be gypped not enterin' into the thing at all. New Orleans happened to be Capato's home town, and, as he had knocked a horde of tramps dead down there, he was a heavy local favorite. The prestige he'd gain by holdin' his own for fifteen rounds with the sensational Kid Roberts would boost Capato 100 per cent as a drawin' card, and even if the Kid knocked him kickin' in the second and real fight, he'd still hold most of his followin', who'd point to the showin' of the native son in the first argument and call

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 his defeat in the second a fluke. As I remarked before, there was nothin' new about this public-be-damned burglary; it's bein' done day in day out by such managers and such promoters as would frame their brothers for $1.50—and are doin' their best to send professional boxin' after the late Jack Barleycorn.

Before some enraged promoter, manager, or the etc can jump up and holler that I am not above takin' liberties with the truth, I will mention the case of a well-known Philadelphia lightweight which a short time ago caused a mild sensation by his quick knockouts of all and sundry which could be lured into the ring with him at his home town. This baby has a local followin' which would make Harding think he was a man without friends, and I can recall no better example of the facts I have set forth above than this same native son. So remarkable was this kid's record that out-of-town sport writers, which had only seen him fight by the via of a telegram from his manager after each of his sensational wins, begin mentionin' him as the logical guy to remove the crown from the lightweight champion.

Then his manager, carried away by the reputation he himself had built up for his meal ticket, matched him with a tough kid from New York—a case-hardened veteran which asked no favors and had stood off the best of 'em. They all looked alike to this boy. It made no difference to him as long as he got his pennies for goin' in and takin' it, or vice and versa. He'd heard all about this Philly marvel with the man-killin' kick in each hand, and it bothered him the same way they worry over the income tax in the almshouse. It took the experienced campaigner about four seconds flat to

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 size up the other bird as a overrated false alarm, and, havin' got that all settled, he panicked the crowd by dumpin' the native son on his ear with the first wallop he tried. Accordin' to newspaper reports, whilst the dumfounded referee (also local talent) was gaspin' forth the count over the flattened gladiator, his hysterical handlers showered him with water—which violation of such rules as the game has brung him to life in time to stall out the round. Now, of course, the water-throwin' thing should have immediately disqualified that baby, and the other kid's manager hollered murder over the foul. He afterward claimed he was waved away and told if his boy didn't go on with the fight he wouldn't get a nickel. In that way the local drawin' card was saved from a one-round knockout which would of cut in half his value to the Philly fight promoters.

Followin' this accident, the Quaker City star went back to knockin' over fourth-rate set-ups as of yore. One night a Philadelphia city official dropped in at the fight club where this boy wonder was astoundin' the natives with his ability to push leather. Again the accounts state that five minutes after the official had shoved his way through the shriekin' mob to the ringside, the "bout" was stopped. Bein' somethin' of a sportsman, this guy had become sickened by the sight of the local marvel deliberately cuttin' up the helpless, frightened, and bleedin' young novice which had been selected for the slaughter by the careful club management. After stoppin' the manslaughter the official walked over to the headliner's corner and warned his manager in anything but drawin'-room terms that un-

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 less his boy was more evenly matched in the future he would not let him fight again in Philly.

These two examples, which is a matter of record, show how the local favorite is built up and protected as a drawin' card by a great many fight clubs whose coarse work is responsible for most of the agitation against boxin'.

Although I knew what the Kid's answer would be, I laid Dummy's proposition before him immediately. I wound up by carelessly remarkin' that the extry ducats which was in it for us might be a swell present for his dear old father, and that as far as I was concerned he could use his own judgment about the thing. He give forth a gasp when I told him his old friend Dummy was now handlin' Tiger Capato, but he didn't leap up and shriek for Dummy's gore like I half expected he would when he heard the rest of it. He just come over and patted me on the back with a chuckle.

"Nothing doing, old man!" he says. "Which, of course, is what I know you told that thug. We've somehow managed to escape the stigma of crookedness so far, and we'll go through clean to the finish! I'm going to put Capato away with a punch, if I can, but if he whips me I'll be the first to congratulate him. I realize I've got a big job on my hands this time—this Capato is the fastest man I've faced to date, and he can het, in spite of what you say to the contrary. That clip I got on the jaw in the first round of our previous bout had me dazed for a couple of rounds afterward!"

"Aw, forget it!" I growls. "You was away off form that night—that's all. But I'd like to hand Dummy somethin' myself. Suppose I let him think we're goin'

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 through with this proposition, and then the chances is that this false alarm of his will come in hog fat and out of condition—make me? He'll think the thing is framed and get careless and—"

The Kid shook his head.

"No—we can't do that either!" he says, shuttin' me off. "That's all wrong too. It would mean a step down to Carney's level—a first step that might lead us through the whole vile labyrinth before we could stop. No, this bout will be absolutely square, regardless of the outcome. You had better warn Carney to have his man fit, because, win or lose, Capato will know he has been in a fight, I promise you!"

"But look here, Kid," I says impatiently, "that honest-as-the-day-is-long stuff is O. K. in copy books and the like, but this here's a game where a guy has got to use his head as well as his hands! There's angles to it that you'll prob'ly never get, and, with what we got at stake, we'd be a coupla fine bimbos if we didn't grab every advantage. Another thing, don't you suppose that Dummy Carney is figurin' on crossin' us? D'ye think I fell for that draw thing? That crook's got a coupla aces he ain't played yet, and we got a right to protect ourselves, ain't we?"

The Kid grins and holds up his hands.

"Here's plenty of protection!" he says. "Now let's go to a show and forget about Dummy and his fellow banditti. We'll enter no agreements with him or anyone else. My self-respect is about all I've managed to hold on to, and I wouldn't sacrifice that for the championship itself!"

Can you beat them college guys? Now you can get

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 a idea of how valuable a manager is to one of them babes in arms, hey?

I went to look for Dummy to break the bad news to him, and found he had waited himself away to New Orleans to get things under way for the brawl: but whilst threadin' through Times Square I bump into no less than Jack Easton, the champion's manager. Jacques had unquestionably excavated a joint where they thought the Eighteenth Amendment was a vaudeville act, and he was lit up like Broadway at eight in the p. m. From the welcome he gimme I could of been his father. After we have exchanged the usual lies about how we are makin' out, Jack won't have it no other way but that I step around to his oasis and knock over a powder with him, and I—well, you know how weak the average man is! Besides, I figured here was a good chance to get some inside dope on the champ's condition and the etc. So we duck around the corner to this den of iniquity, and after we have sneaked a couple past our pleasantly surprised tonsils, Jack gets exceedin'ly talkative.

"C'mon!" he says, weavin' back and forth in front of me. "Lesh lap up large quantities of hooch! I'm looser'en a pail of ashes to-day—gonna sign a seventy-five-thousan'—'scuse me—movie contract for the Big Feller in the mornin'."

"Well, Jack, go to it," I says. "You better take them movie guys whilst the takin' is good, because next year I'll be handlin' a champion!"

"Humph!" he mutters. "You're gonna han'le—gonna han'le shamp, heh? Stop kiddin' yourself, stop kiddin'—'scuse me, mush have caught the hecups from

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 that—that bartender there. What was I tryin' to say? Oh, Kid Robersh. Well, say, they's as mush chance Kid Robersh bein' shampeen as they ish of me becomin' total 'stainer! Howsh Kid Robersh gonna be shamp if he don't never under no circumstances get a chance at the title? Ansher me that, heh?"

I commenced to smell large quantities of rats in this drunken talk, especially after Dummy Carney's proposition, so I quietly lead Monsieur Jack Easton into the back room and sit down at a table with him. When I left him sprawled out there, gettin' the bartender nervous with his snores some time later, I was on the verge of hydrophobia, and I think if Dummy Carney had come along then I would of took a chance and croaked him for luck!

It set me back seven rounds of drinks, or, in the other words, $14, to find out that Dummy had framed me and the Kid like Delia framed Samson. There wasn't gonna be no "draw" decision at New Orleans. There wasn't gonna be no second fight, and the champ wasn't gonna ever meet Kid Roberts if he could help it! The half-plastered Easton let all that fall from his silly-lookin' face some time between the fifth and sixth shot of grain alcohol, when he couldn't even recall who I was. The big tramp which held the title didn't want no part of Kid Roberts—what he wanted to do was to meet Tiger Capato, which same he figured would be a spread for him. Therefore, Capato was to put the Kid away in the battle of New Orleans and kill off our claims to a championship mill. The knockout was to come in Round Four, by the way.

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 In order to guarantee my boy goin' out, Carney and the yeggs which run this particular club had decided to pull one of the rawest stunts known to a game which packs more tricks than Houdini ever seen. This one has been staged dozens of times out in the bushes, but very rarely on the Big Time. It's usually pulled to allow a beaten man a few extry minutes to recover, but I never heard of it bein' used for the purpose Dummy Carney had figured it for against Kid Roberts.

Exactly at the end of the first minute's boxin' in Round Four every light in the clubhouse would suddenly grow dim and then go out for ten seconds! Kid Roberts, knowin' nothin' about this, would be as much startled as the crowd—certainly he'd falter in his stride, drop his hands and prob'ly step back to wait for light. But Tiger Capato, havin' nothin' else but this "accident" in his mind for weeks, would be prepared. The first slight dimmin' of the glare about the ring was to be the tip-off to him, and he'd start one from the floor just as it went black. It was a hundred to one he'd connect, and when the lights immediately flashed up again, Kid Roberts would be as cold as a pawnbroker's eye, and that guy which pulled the switch in the basement would be several blocks away from there and still travelin'. Then the announcer was to jump into the ring, calm the crowd by explainin' that it was simply a case of a fuse blowin' out, and order the quarrel started again at once! Now, even if the Kid was in any condition to get to the middle of the ring, he'd be a dazed mark for Capato then. The guys close to the ropes would of seen Capato start a wallop, and their opinion would be divided over the thing in the excitement. Many

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 would claim that, as neither boy could of known that a fuse was gonna blow out, the break was as fair for one as the other, and Capato had simply been lucky, or clever, enough to beat the Kid to the punch. The rest of the mob wouldn't know what it was all about, but they'd see the Kid on the floor, and that would be ample. Remember, it was Tiger Capato's home town!

As to this "lights out" stuff, any sportin' editor can supply names and dates of duplicates of the above sportsmanlike trick from his files to such gentle readers which is now grinnin' and callin' it impossible.

Well, as the time drawed near for the fight, I got crazier every day. I was afraid to tell Carney I'm wise to his plant for fear he'd call the bout off altogether and give the champ the excuse he was lookin' for to duck a battle with us. To make it worse, when I told the Kid what I'd found out, he laughed his head off and refused to believe it!

"Your mind has been preying on Dummy Carney for so long you'd believe anything!" he chortles. "Why, the thing's too preposterous to give a passing thought. Besides, you say yourself that your source of information was a drunken man, and you know an intoxicated person usually has a wonderful imagination. Not even a Carney would dare attempt anything as glaringly trooked as that—personally, I think the champion's manager has been joshin' you!"

Sweet Papa!

Any doubts I might of had about it myself was all wiped away in New Orleans a few hours before the clash, when word comes to our room that a lady has

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 got to see Kid Roberts on a matter of life and death. I could of choked the bell hop silly which brung up that sensational news because the damosels had been poison to the Kid up to date, and here on the brinks of the biggest fight in his career a Jane has got to butt in!

"Nothin' stirrin'!" I shouted to the boy. "Git outa here and close that door!" Me and a coupla handlers had the Kid flat on the bed, givin' him a final body massage.

"Here—just a minute!" pipes Roberts, sittin' up with a jerk. "Let's see what this is. I do not know why any lady should want to see me now, but if it's as important as that—" He reaches for a bath robe. "Have the lady come up!" he tells the wide-eyed boy.

There is a timid knock at the door in a few minutes, and in comes said lady. She's a thin, little, kinda woreout dame, but very soothin' to the eyes at that. Her first bomb is that she will see Kid Roberts alone or not at all, and she seems terrible worked up. Without a word to us the Kid bows, opens the door to the sittin' room of this suite, ushers her in, and follows, closin' the door before I could make a move.

The conference lasts about ten minutes, durin' which time I died about seven times and cussed myself to death seven more for lettin' the Kid get out of my sight! The mysterious female goes right to the hall door, shakes the Kid's hand, makes him a present of a soulful glance, and blows.

"Well, what the—" I begins.

"That," says the Kid very solemnly, "that—was Tiger Capato's wife! A very sweet, wholesome little

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 woman and the mother of four children. She—eh—ah—she is afraid—well, she—this may sound absurd to you, but it didn't to me, not with the pathetic eagerness she told it! She had a dream last night in which she saw Capato—her husband—knocked out. As I say, you will smile, but, nevertheless, that woman is convinced that Capato is going to lose. I—ah—wish I were as certain!" he adds, with a short laugh. "However, she has asked me to do her a favor, which, under the circumstances, I could not well refuse. I—"

"For God's sake, what have you promised her, Kid?" I bawls, grabbin' him.

"Don't get excited!" he says, movin' away irritably. "As she explains it, Capato is married and has children. Prize fighting is his profession—it's the only thing he has ever done or can do well enough to make a living. He's a big favorite in this town, and a quick defeat would hurt his value to the clubs here to a great extent. Capato's wife simply wants me to allow him to make some kind of a showing for a few rounds—I tell you, she is as certain that he will ultimately lose as I am of my name! She sat there and repeated it over and over in a dull, toneless voice, with the fatalistic calm that is peculiar to the superstitious. You do not understand her type—I do. So, therefore, I will—"

"You'll knock Capato dead with the first punch if you can, or you'll leave the ring on a shutter!" I howls, dancin' around him. "You big fathead, don't you see now that Jack Easton's dope was right? They got that lights-out stunt framed for the fourth round, and she

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 simply wants to make sure that Capato will be in the ring up to then! Them guys is leavin' nothin' to chance. They—"

"Oh, stop it!" barks the Kid. "Hang it, man, you get on my nerves with your morbid belief that everyone is crooked! You've got me all upset now with your infernal nagging. Let me alone before I go to pieces and make a spectacle of myself in front of that crowd. If I didn't feel capable of taking care of myself, I wouldn't enter the ring. I'll let Capato stay three or four rounds for his wife's sake, and then go after him. I told that poor, worried little woman I'd do it, and I will. Now shut up!"

Up to the minute we crawled through the ropes he wouldn't budge a scant inch from that.

As a last desperate resort I grabbed hold of a sport writer and spilled the whole story in his doubtin' ears, so that when the fourth round did arrive I'd at the least be able to stop the fight and expose Dummy from the ring. You see, I had it doped out that the guy they'd planted at the switch in the basement would have a certain hour and minute to snap off the lights, and if I could jump into the ring and time my speech properly the house would go dark right at the end of it, provin' that I was tellin' the truth. The sport writer warmed up as I went on with the thing, and ended by tellin' me not to breathe a word of it to anybody else. He says if it was true it would be a whale of a yarn for his paper, and if it wasn't he'd personally see that I got run out of the fight game.

"By the way," I says, "is Capato married?"

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 "No!" says the sport writer, scribblin' away. "Why?"

"Nothin'!" I groans and staggered over to the Kid.

There was all smiles in Tiger Capato's corner when I fin'ly went across to examine his bandages, and Carney greets me with a chuckle. I suddenly leaned down and stuck my face right up to his ear.

"You pull them lights and eighty-seven coppers will be in this corner, you rat!" I snarls.

For just a fraction of a second Dummy drawed back and whitened, and then he showed he had missed his trade by not becomin' a actor.

"What's the idea—are you scared crazy?" he says. "What's this stuff about lights?"

I says nothin', but turned my undivided attention to Kid Roberts. The boy was a bundle of raw nerves—bouncin' up and down on his stool, slappin' his hands together with a quick, jerky movement, and bitin' his mps as he stared out at the yellin' crowd. Then the announcer called over to us to come to the center for a flashlight pose, but you couldn't hear a word over the din. Say—they was hangin' from the rafters, sittin' on each other, millin' all over the newspaper guys at the ringside, and pourin' in the doors which the coppers was fightin' to close. Out in the street some more thousands swarmed around waitin' to hear even some noise from inside and try to judge how the battle was goin' by that. The announcer called to the Kid again, got no action, and motioned to the to get busy. That baby slams the gong for silence and—the Kid hears this bell, leaps off the stool, and was half-way across the ring, both hands workin', before we could grab him!

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 position of champion in ordinary. Warburton was consulted about new editions; annotated Pope's poems; stood sponsor to the last Dunciad, and was assured by his admiring friend that the comment would prolong the life of the poetry. Pope left all his copyrights to this friend, whilst his MSS. were given to Bolingbroke.

When the University of Oxford proposed to confer an honorary degree upon Pope, he declined to receive the compliment, because the proposal to confer a smaller honour upon Warburton had been at the same time thrown out by the University. In fact, Pope looked up to Warburton with a reverence almost equal to that which he felt for Bolingbroke. If such admiration for such an idol was rather humiliating, we must remember that Pope was unable to detect the charlatan in the pretentious but really vigorous writer; and we may perhaps admit that there is something pathetic in Pope's constant eagerness to be supported by some sturdier arm. We find the same tendency throughout his life. The weak and morbidly sensitive nature may be forgiven if its dependence leads to excessive veneration.

Warburton derived advantages from the connexion, the prospect of which, we may hope, was not the motive of his first advocacy. To be recognized by the most eminent man of letters of the day was to receive a kind of certificate of excellence, valuable to a man who had not the regular university hall-mark. More definite results followed. Pope introduced Warburton to, and to Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield. Through Murray he was appointed preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and from Allen he derived greater benefits—the hand of his niece and heiress, and an introduction to Pitt, which gained for him the bishopric of Gloucester.

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 The roar of the mob hung fire for a minute, and then, as they took in the situation, a yell of laughs comes boomin' across the ring till it seemed to rattle the buildin'. Like the Kid, the crowd was on edge, nervous—almost hysterical—and the Kid's mistakin' that bell for the beginnin' of the fight busted the tension. But the effect of that tornado of hee-haws on Kid Roberts was as sudden as it was remarkable. He turned and faced the mob, pale as two dollars worth of skimmed milk, and from the look he give 'em I thought for a second he was gonna jump over the ropes and go to the mat with the entire attendance! His lips curled away from his flashin' white teeth in a snarl like a bad-tempered wolf's, and the steady glare in his eye caused friend announcer, which he wasn't even lookin' at, to step hurriedly aside. In a instant I seen one chance in a million to crab Dummy's frame-up and crab it to the royal families taste. The way he was geared up then, Kid Roberts could of licked the League of Nations, and my job was to keep him that way for two more minutes! Keep him tight strung to that cold, blood-cravin', murderin' rage before he could let down, think of Capato's "wife," or—

I grabbed his arm, let out one of them high-pitched, nerve-gratin' guffaws, holdin' my side with my free hand. "Why, you big boob!" I shrieks. "D'ye hear them babies givin' you the laugh? The thing's gonna be a farce! Ha, ha, ha, ha! My Gawd, I've handled some boneheads, but you win the garage! Sweet Mamma—you won't have to knock Capato dead; he'll die laughin'!"

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 "You too, eh?" he bites off through his set lips, and sends me head over heels through the ropes with a push. I must have took a funny fall, because off goes the mob into a fresh spasm, and Capato acted as laugh leader. They was still holdin' their ribs when the bell clanged for real; the newspaper guys, havin' made ample notes of all this stuff, settled back to watch a long, tough fight—when, before the clang has died out, Kid Roberts is plungin' into Tiger Capato's corner. The Tiger ain't had time to take the grin off his face, but the Kid took it off with a left jab that spun Capato around like a top and left a jagged, scarlet streak. There was no laughin' now—just a continuous roar, like a billion tons of coal goin' down a tin chute into a empty cellar. Shiftin' his headlong attack without a wasted motion, the Kid pinned the dumfounded Capato against the ropes in his own corner and begins shootin' lefts and rights to the body with the steady rap, rap, rap, rap of a steam riveter. This guy they called the Tiger never got a chance to set before he was half-ways out on his feet. A newspaper guy next to me, callin' the punches to his telegraph operator, give it up in disgust and switches to: "In the first two minutes Kid Roberts belted Capato with everything but the club's franchise."

The frantic shrieks from his handlers stirred Capato into tryin' desperately to duck, dodge, cover up, or dive into a clinch, to escape the hurricane of leather that bounced him off the ropes and back again, but he might as well of tried to stop a grizzly's charge with a pez shooter. A terrific left to the stomach doubled him up like a match stick in its last glow, and, as his

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 rollin' head fell forward, a right swing connected with acrunchin' plop! Dead to the world, Tiger Capato slid along the lower rope, sagged there for a second, and then slid like a sack of flour under it and down almost in Dummy Carney's shakin' arms. The Kid stepped back and threw up his head.

"Laugh at that, you fools!" he roared, and walked to his corner in the nearest thing to silence I ever met in a fight club. Then the mob got its second wind, and they must of heard 'em in Los Angeles and figured another quake had arrived.

It took about five minutes for the crowd to get sane enough to even start for the doors, and it took about fifty cops to keep 'em out of the ring. The Kid's color had come back, and he's interested only in gettin' my word that I didn't get hurt when he dumped me through the ropes, and that I ain't off of him. He must of apologized ninety times at the least!

"By Gad, I need a keeper!" he says, still grippin' my hand. "I—I must have lost my head completely when that crowd gave me the laugh!" He give a shiver. "Ten thousand of them laughing at me—imagine, sitting there and jeering as if I were some sort of clown!" He blazed up again for a instant and then looks kinda shamefaced. "Darn it all," he says, shakin' his head, "I've broken my promise to Capato's wife—I said I'd let him stay, but that laugh drove everything out of my head but—"

"Shut up!" I howls, crazy with joy. "You done a beaucoup job."

A little guy shoves his way over to us. It's the

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 sportin' editor I had told about Dummy's attempt to frame us. He looks sore.

"Say!" he growls, "what kind of a thing were you tryin' to put over on me with that double-crossin' pipe dream of yours? Of all the weird yarns I ever heard, that leads the league! You New York guys must think everybody that don't live within subway distance of Times Square is a hick, hey? So they was gonna job that man-eater of yours in the fourth round—just like a movie, eh? Villain in the cellar at the switchboard and everything else. Shame on you!" he says, waggin' his finger at me and pullin' out his watch. "I must have had a wisp of hay in my mouth when you come along. Let's see now, the slaughter started at 10 p. m. on the dot, end it's now pretty near twenty after—ten-nineteea, to be correct—so that your conspirator in the basement, not knowin' that the party's all over, wid be throwin' off that switch in about a minute—which would have been shortly after the start of the fatal fourth round. Then the fiendish Tiger Capat—"

He never finished the rest of that because, without no warning, every light in the place went out!

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gift of bein' able to think, whilst his charmin' opponent is merrily bouncin' gloves off his achin' bean, has turned seemin'ly certain defeat into a sensational victory for many's the battered and punch-drunk box fighter. Next to the ability to knock a man kickin' with either hand and the heart to weather a sudden unexpected hurricane of crushin' rights and lefts to the body or jaw, coolness under fire is the most important part of the high-class leather pusher's make-up. Hundreds of promisin' kids, which can hit like Caruso can sing and take punishment like the information clerk at a railroad station, never get past the semifinals because the only use they make of their heads is to butt the other guy with.

They know that a punch on the jaw will prob'ly knock their tête-à-tête for a goal if it lands on what is known to the trade as the "button," and with that idea firmly planted in their mind they sail out of their corner at the first bell and begin wildly swingin' at the bobbin' chin in front of 'em with gusto and abandon. As far as they're concerned, the other baby ain't got no short ribs, kidneys, heart, stomach, or any of the other places where a well-timed right or

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 left smash might end the thing and send the crowd home hoarse and rejoicin'. They once flattened a guy with a roundhouse swing to the jaw, and they're now convinced that all they is to the art of box fightin' is jab with the left to the body and then, as friend opponent's guard comes down, cross the right to the jaw.

It's comical to watch them boneheads work when they're in there tryin' with a cool-headed, clever kid which gets 'em all figured out in Round One and makes 'em punchin' bags from then on. The fast boxer, which ain't especially fond of takin' it, knows they're dangerous right up to the last: bell, no matter how badly he's outpointed 'em, because one properly placed clout from this flounderin' tramp may put him out for half a hour. So, guessin' their every move and bein' sure of his own footwork, he keeps stickin' his chin invitin'ly in front of 'em. The boob's eyes glitters and he stabs his ponderous left feint for the body, at the same time drawin' back the deadly right so's a guy sixteen miles from the clubhouse would know what he figured on doin' with it. The boss boxer makes a play at droppin' his guard. The boob swings, misses, and is exceedin'ly surprised to find his own right eye beginnin' to close and the mob yellin' for his immediate extinction. He shakes his head doubtfully, pulls a silly grin, and tries again, with the same result. Next time maybe the other kid walks into the right swing, lets it go over his shoulder, and shakes the tramp from stem to stern with half a dozen rights and lefts to his wide-open body before the disgusted referee pulls 'em apart. And so it goes to the final gong, the clever guy which can't hit pilin'

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 up points and the ham with the man-killin' wallop rippin' the air with useless wallops which tire him out and make him a set-up, because he ain't got brains enough to realize his attack is all wrong and needs to be mixed up a bit to get results.

The toughest job a pilot of box fighters has is to hammer into the usual mass of concrete between the neck and hair of his meat cards the importance of watchin' at all times durin' a hard bout for the lucky break which means a win for the guy which takes advantage of it. It may be a little incident which the crowd never sees. For the example, many's the guy I've seen knocked cold the instant he reached down mechanically to give a hitch to a pair of slippin' tights. The other baby had noticed that his playfellow's trunks was loose and was waitin' till he reached down to grab 'em, knowin' that for maybe a eighth of a second his guard would be lowered—and—well, a eighth of a second's enough! The heavyweight championship of dear old England once depended on a thing as small and seemin'ly as unimportant as that. Pull your chairs up close, and I'll just about kill the next half hour with the tale.

About two months after we have knocked Tiger Capato dead in a round—the Tiger bein' supposedly the last hurdle between us and the champ—me and Kid Roberts is convened in our lair at the hotel in New York discussin' the fascinatin' subject of box fightin'. The indications was that the champ's movie contracts would keep him outside the ropes for the worst part of a year, but in the meanwhile we have got to eat and likewise add to this bank roll for the

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 Kid's busted old man. Business in our line was very dull in the land the Marines made famous, for the reason that we have trimmed all the good heavies and the Kid will not under no circumstances frame a scrap or fight set-ups.

"It's more than eight weeks since I fought Capato," the Kid growls, pacin' up and down the room like a irritated panther. "In that time we haven't earned a penny, and I haven't drawn on a glove. I'm getting stale through lack of work and—"

"Just a minute," I says soothin'ly. "It's your own fault we can't get no work. If you'd of saved up some of them boloneys for return dates, instead of bouncin' 'em all in a couple of rounds, we could go back over the circuit like the rest of 'em does and clean up again. Now, the only way we can get a fight—"

"Is to join the Polish army, I suppose!" butts in the Kid bitterly. "Well, if—"

"No!" I hollers, jumpin' up. "Not Poland, but England! France and England, where the set-ups runs wild and where any guy which gets through two fights without bein' knocked kickin' is made champion of Europe in whatever class he's in. Why, you'll be a riot over there, Kid; I must of been crazy not to of thought of it before!"

"Well, don't talk about it; let's go!" snarls the Kid, nervously reachin' for his hat. "I'm going out and walk off some of this depression, and incidentally I'll find out about passports and accommodations—it will give me something to do. This infernal inactivity is driving me mad and it must be damned unpleasant

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 for you, old man, to have to bear the brunt of my beastly temper."

"That's all right, son," I grins, pattin' him on the back. "All real fighters is temperamental, whether they work with their head or their hands. By the way, speakin' of fightin' and the etc., d'ye know our contract run out last week and that right now they ain't a thing holdin' you to me if you want to cut loose? You're no fifty-dollar preliminary ham any more, Kid; you're the next world's heavyweight champion, with a possible half million iron men ready to fall into your pockets in two or three years. Also, you ain't no roughneck which don't know what it's all about; you got a college education, a business head, and somethin' I'll never have—class! If it come to it, you could make your own matches, look after your own affairs, and a few extry pennies will get you experienced handlers to swing a towel in your corner every time you start. All this would mean a savin' to you of half your earnin's—the half I get now. I want you to know just how you stand so's you can make your own choice, Kid, because you—well, you been different than any guy I ever handled: we been more like pals than manager and box fighter—and I got a right to enjoy the sensations of bein' square if I wanna."

The Kid come over and takin' both my hands in them bone crushers of his, presented me with a full-toothed smile.

"As long as I remain in the ring I want you to look after the business end of my affairs," he says.

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 "It was your canny matchmaking, whole-hearted en couragement and the shrewd advice and training you gave me that took me as far as I am now! It was also you who bullied the promoters into giving me the guarantees I've been getting and got my price raised from two hundred a bout to five hundred and more a round. I'm not going to cast you aside now, just when there's a chance for you to cash in on your efforts. No, we'll stick together until the finish and keep the split at fifty-fifty, old man. You're earning your share as much as I earn mine. Why, if I couldn't look over when the going gets rough and see you in my corner, I'd be as helpless as a rudderless ship! As you say, we've been pals—and pals don't break over money. We don't need a contract. I'm sure our friendship is stronger than any legal sheet of paper. Let's continue as we have been doing on a—a—gentlemen's agreement. Does that hit you all right?"

Did it hit me all right? I'll ejaculate it did! Imagine a blue-corpuscled, classy, inlaid in the decanter aristocrat like him, intimatin' out loud that I am what is known as a gentleman. Sweet Mamma, should he of gave me a hundred thousand bucks right then, I wouldn't of felt no better!

Well, about ten days later we are out on the boundin' billows on the en route to King George's home town, and they ain't no hospital and few cemeteries in the world containin' a guy one-fifth as sick as me. For three days I was a object which would of aroused pity in the chest of a Bowery loan shark, and I accumulated some doubts about Columbus discoverin' America,

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 on the account I don't believe anybody ever stayed on the ocean that long. With the Kid, how the so ever, it was all different. The boy had sailed a mean yacht and the etc when his masculine parent had large quantities of sugar, and he was as much at home in the cradle of the deep as a barnacle. He dragged me out of the cabin where I had crawled to die in peace and made me gallop around the deck, till, much to my dumfounded astonishment, I was able to listen to the dinner bugle without goin' into convulsions as heretofore.

About four days after the ship has been caperin' wildly hithers and you on the ocean, and I have decided they is more heroes in the navy than any other place in the wide, wide world, a ball is had on the heels of supper. The Kid drags out his "Curse you, Jack Dalton!" scenery, wraps it around his manly form, and won't have it no other way but that I climb into the one he made me stake myself to and join the merry mob on the promenade deck. As a dancer, I'm a fine box-fight manager! I don't know the difference between a bar of music and a bar of soap, provided they is any, and after I have sit out a couple of Onesteps with Janes which would be safe anywheres and which talked about their varied operations and how many times they had been across, I escaped to the smokin' room on the account of preferrin' the male liars to the female pests.

But Kid Roberts had a field day with the ladies as per usual. This big blond in evenin' clothes was a sight which would of made Apollo take arsenic, and, Sweet Mamma, how the women did set sail for

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 him, once he started steppin' out on that ballroom floor! Young, old, and unhappy mediums in between crowded around the Kid, vampin' him silly, while their boy friends and bitter half-s let forth glowers of rage.

How the so ever, while Kid Roberts had a fatal weakness for the sex made famous by the Garden of Eden, I didn't get particularly nervous as long as he played no favorites but kept circulatin' hithers and you among the beautiful girls, some of which was in evenin' gowns which would of wrung a gasp from Annette Kellermann.

But, alas and alackaday, my worst fears come to a head when along around the shanks of the evenin' a couple of newcomers appeared on the scenes, in the shape of a inclined-to-be elderly and dignified gent and a inclined-to-be young and dazzlin' girl. Aside from everything else, money and class stuck out all over 'em. Kid Roberts let forth a gasp and flashed white for the part of a second when the old boy drawed off the girl's opera cloak, revealin' some thin' in the feminine line which would of mesmerized Adam into givin' Eve her apple back untasted. Sweet Papa, what a knockout she was! One of them little de luxe editions of the world's greatest mystery story, viz., woman: hair a bewilderin' fluff of polished copper, eyes as fascinatin' as a month-old baby's and less sophisticated, a complexion which would retail for about ten thousand fish, could you get it in a can and a—eh—a figure which would make the front row of the Ziegfeld Follies seem like a shapeless mass. I figured her age at about half a

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 hour past nineteen, and they is no doubt that many's the tall, willowy blonde took one look at this vest-pocket size heart breaker that night and wished she had missed the boat!

The Kid was down for the count after the first look, and the luck of fools and lovers, which is the same thing, was with him. Over comes the old gent himself whilst this second Venus is dancin' with some bimbo which must of been born with a four-leafed clover in each hand.

"Pardon me," remarks the apparent father of the prettiest girl on our popular planet, whilst he pulls a grin which tags him to me as a regular guy. "You're Kane Halliday, are you not?"

The Kid looks kind of flushed, but he was always there with the old drawin'-room stuff. "I am," he admits, with a well-placed bow. "But you have the advantage of me, I'm afraid."

"I suppose so," says old Father William. "It's some years since I last saw you, and then you were too busy to stop for a chat."

He puts his hand on the Kid's shoulder and throws that grin into high.

"You were—ah—going through eleven husky young Harvard cubs with a pigskin tucked under your left arm!"

The Kid blushes like a bevy of schoolgirls, but before he can set the old guy goes on: "I'm Senator Brewster of New York, a schoolmate of your dear mother's—whom you greatly resemble—and an admirer of your prowess in the twenty-four-foot square. I saw your last fight with Kennedy and

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 it was a corker. Halliday, your right hook to the jaw is the fastest thing I've ever seen inside of a glove and I haven't missed a championship bout in the last twenty-five years!"

"You're a boxing enthusiast, then?" inquires the Kid with the greatest of relief, whilst a wanderin' eye fixes itself on the girl which had been with the old boy.

"Indeed, I am!" says our elderly tête-à-tête, with a touch of gusto. "Much to the annoyance of Dolores—my daughter—whose feminine curiosity led her to witness one prize fight with me and who, I am sure, will never see another! Not understanding the—eh—fine points of the game, she thought it merely a brutal and disgusting exhibition—to quote her verbatim. I've been boxing with an instructor at my club in Washington for nearly a year, and I feel like a boy of twenty. I don't know what a doctor looks like, and I'm eating and sleeping like a Hoosier farm hand! If you intend doing any training to keep in condition on the trip across, Halliday, I'd be delighted to come down to the very excellent gymnasium they have on the lower deck and—ah—limber up a bit with you."

The Kid smiles down at this good old sport, which, for all his white hair and wrinkled face, looked the photograph of health and likewise able to give a good account of himself, fisticuffally speakin' should the occasion ever come up.

"I shall be pleased to have you, senator," says Kid Roberts, and then, realizin' that him and the sen is far from alone, he introduces me with not a little

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 zest. The president baiter seemed tickled silly to be hangin' out with the famous Kid Roberts and his equally likable manager, and I was beaucoup glad that I'd had brains enough to be caparisoned in a dress suit, the first and only time in my gay young life I ever give a U. S. or an any other senator the pleasure of shakin' hands with me.

"I want you to meet my daughter," says the gentleman from New York, and the Kid's eyes takes on a glint which might of caused the senator to reconsider his proposition, if he had noticed it.

The Kid smiles and then immediately gets serious. "Perhaps," he says quietly, "perhaps Miss Brewster would not care to be introduced to a—a—prize fighter, in view of her dislike of boxing."

"Eh—ahem," says the senator, linking his arm in the Kid's,—"I—ah—Halliday, whatever you may be doing now and for whatever reason, you are a gentleman born. You forgot I reminded you that your mother and I were schoolmates. For a heavyweight boxer you are singularly free from the usual marks of your profession and—ah—it might be as well not to mention your—ah—calling to Dolores just now. It seems to me that we can find many other interesting subjects to discuss."

The Kid bowed, but they was a queer look on his face, and the next thing I know we are havin' another orgy of introductions, and then Dolores Brewster and the Kid is slidin' over the polished floor and me and Senator Brewster is out in the smokin' room talkin' box fightin' and drinkin' none of your business!

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 Well, from that minute till we fin'ly reached the bustlin' village of Liverpool, Kid Roberts hung around Dolores Brewster like she was a glass bowl and he was a gold fish. They danced, eat, walked, talked, bridge-whisted, ouija-boarded, and whatnot together till they was the talk of the ship.

When the Irish coast looms up on the horizon the Kid bounces into our cabin at the witchin' hours of midnight and without no preliminaries knocks me for a goal by announcin' he's gonna wed Dolores Brewster at his earliest possible convenience. This was about the eighteenth romantical affair de heart which had occurred to the Kid since he come under my wings and about the first one to show the earmarks of bein' annoyin'ly serious on the part of both sides. I spent somthin' like two hours beggin', threatenin', pleadin', and arguin' with Kid Roberts against allowin' himself to be dragged to a altar before he had became heavyweight champ of the entire world. He sit on the side of his berth with a faraway and long-ago look on his face and a shoe in his hand, and when I get all through on the account I got to get my breath, he let forth a sigh and remarks to a near-by porthole:

"And to think—to think we're going to be married as soon as we reach London!"

Sweet Mamma, a guy in love is tough to take!

How the so ever, I'm still hopin' that somethin' untoward will come to the pass as of yore before this love's young dream can turn into a nightmare for me. My wildest hopes was realized the night we anchored in a river which the English has nicknamed

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 the Mersey. The Kid and his charmer is givin' the dark deck and moonlight thing a heavy play folleyin' the customary dancin' and by dumb's luck I happen to almost stumble over 'em whilst I'm taking a slight promenade. I have never listened at no keyholes or the like in my life, as I am not that type of guy, but I could not prevent myself hearin' Miss Dolores Brewster tell the Kid that unless he give up the prize ring at once and immediately, all bets was off. He was a nice, bright, handsome, and ambitious kid, but she wanted no leather pushers in hers, and that was that!

I leave it to you how I waited and hung on the Kid's answer. They was no question but that he was head over heels as far as Dolores was concerned and everybody in the world knows that a guy which has fell a victim to love's sweet charms ain't got the brains of a gnat left in his head. The heavyweight title and all the sugar which went with it was loomin' in the offin' and if Kid Roberts threw away his gloves now—Woof, just thinkin' about it got me on the brink of the hysterics!

"My dear," he says, "what you ask is impossible. I have gone too far to turn back now. The atmosphere of the prize ring is almost as obnoxious to me as it is to you, but until I have earned enough money to rehabilitate my father and myself I must go on. Also, you seem to forget that if we are to be"—the boy's voice shook a bit, and he leaned closer if that was possible—"if we are to be married, I must have enough money to insure your—"

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 "Father has more money than he knows what to do with," she butts in, layin' a vampish hand on his arm.

"He is very fortunate," remarks the Kid kinda chilly, as he straightened up. "But your father's money has nothing whatever to do with me. No, dear, if this were a book or a moving picture, I would probably renounce my present profession in a highly melodramatic manner, and then it would be discovered that I am really the heir to the throne of Alluvia, or something like that, in disguise. But being sordid reality, I'm afraid I'll have to play my hand out to the finish. There is too much at stake for me to give up now!"

Dolores played her ace. She give vent to a sigh and presented the Kid with a glance, which if it made me dizzy, what do you figure it must of done to him?

"Even for me?" she murmurs.

"Even for you!" answers the Kid, hoarse but firm.

Dolores Brewster gathered up her cloak and drifted into the cabin without as much as a glance or a answer to the Kid's dazed exclamation.

So that was all settled!

Three weeks after the above came to the pass, me and Kid Roberts is located at Hampstead Heath, a burg on the hoopskirts of dear old London, trainin' for a scheduled twenty-round muss with Bandsman Shayne, heavyweight assault and battery champion of the United (ha, ha!) Kingdom of Ireland and Great Britain.

I signed articles for the entertainment whilst the

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 Kid was scourin' Blighty with a vacuum cleaner in a effort to find Dolores Brewster. Bandsman Shayne was likewise among those absent at the signin' of the articles, the pugilistic pride of England bein' tourin' the outlands as a vaudeville attraction. So the young men didn't meet when us managers convened at the National Sportin' Club and, over a couple of seidels of the stuff the Anti-Saloon League made famous, accepted a purse of four thousand pounds for the massacre, to be split so per cent to the winner and 40 per cent to the guy they carried out. Bandsman Shayne's manager was a tall, slim, walrus-whiskered baby which packed a shifty eye and mixed a mean highball. He looked, talked, and acted like the undefeated champion boob of the world, and that's what I figured him. Oo la la, what a awakenin' I got!

Well, the Kid took to his trainin' like Mary Pickford took to a camera and within a week I was practically out of sparrin' partners. Cut to the quick by the charmin' Miss Brewster havin' gave him the raspberry, he went around snarlin' and growlin' like a peeved bear, and he seemed to get a lot of relief by batterin' his handlers from pillar to post.

I found handlers as scarce in and around Hampstead Heath as silence is in a locomotive works, and when about ten days before the fight a big husky strolls into our camp and asks for a job I could of kissed him, and for all I know I did! This boy was one tough-lookin' baby and he had "I-can-take-it!" wrote all over him. He was a good fifteen pounds heavier than my 195 ringside Kid Roberts and fully

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 as tall, and before he ever raised a glove I knowed he had been to the races many's the time before, by the way he climbed through the ropes of the trainin' ring. He claimed he was entitled Gunner Enright and was due to go to the post himself in a couple of weeks. He says likewise that he wants experience more than anything else and would give the Kid all the limberin' up he could stand for two pounds a week and board.

Gunner Enright had been in our midst just one hour, English time, when I was fallin' over my own feet makin' him propositions to come back to the U. S. under my management, for I seen that this bimbo could knock two-thirds of our second-rate heavies for a row of refuse containers. Kid Roberts was as happy as a bride winnin' her first argument and promised this guy a bonus if he trimmed the Engish title holder, because the Gunner was givin' him the first real workouts he'd had since we hit the old country. He was fast, he was clever, he could hit, and he could take it, and that's all even the A. E. F. could do, hey?

Gunner Enright told me he'd think over my proposition to come back with us to the formerly Land of the Spree, and when I asked him was this Bandsman Shayne a false alarm or a beaucoup puncher, the Gunner curls his wolf's lip and pans the English champ for half a hour. He claims the box-fightin' musician is as yellah as the Chinese flag, has ducked either twelve or eighty-six chances to meet him, and that Kid Roberts should put him away with three or four clouts at the utmost.

A few days before the large clash the Kid draws

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 me aside whilst waitin' for the Gunner to get into his trainin' togs, and they's a queer smile on his face.

"This Enright would be a sensation in America if he was properly matched," he says. "No man I have fought has given me a stiffer argument than he does when he gets warmed up to his work. He's a terrific body puncher and can also take his gruel without flinching—if you've noticed, he's scarcely taken a backward step in all the workouts we've had together. I have the firm conviction that this fellow has never really cut loose yet. He gives me the impression many times that he's holding back his returns. Tell him to-day to let me have everything he has in stock. If I can't handle a sparring partner, I've got no business in the same ring with a champion, and the sooner I find it out the better!"

I grinned and glanced toward Gunner Enright, which was comin' over with the gloves.

"As usual before every big scrap you got a attack of nerves," I say. "I'll tell this cuckoo to give you the works, and then I want you to knock him out—just so's he won't kid himself that he could take you if he wanted to."

The Kid shakes his head. "I'm not going to punish any sparring partner unnecessarily," he says. "I'm getting plenty of work letting them come to me and simply standing them off. You've seen that I always let them clinch and recover when I forget myself and sting them a bit. I've been a little more strenuous with this man than with the others, only because he can assimilate punishment and seems to fight better

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 when he's shaken up. Tell him to try and knock me out—I want to see what he's concealing."

They boxed three two-minute rounds, goin' at it hammer and tongs, and they was a lot more action in this thing than in many's the real mill I've looked at. Gunner Enright took me at my word, and if he didn't endeavor to knock my comin' champ for a goal, then Grant didn't care whether he win the Civil War or not! The Gunner was gettin' a trifle too fast for me, and had opened up a old gash over the Kid's left eye which bled rather lavishly, when I called a halt. Right before I bawled "Time!" he staggered Roberts with a beautiful right to the head, and the Kid, thoroughly enjoyin' himself, come back with two lefts to the jaw that dropped the enthusiastic Gunner to his knees. That was ample for me, and I stopped the show. Much to my amazement, the Gunner apparently lost his head and insisted on continuin' the quarrel. He begin by pleadin' and wound up by gettin' nasty. When he hollered that he could "Bash the bleedin' Yank's fyce in!" meanin' the highly amused Kid, I paid him off and, with the kindly assistance of a couple of volunteers, throwed him out of the camp.

The night of the Kid Roberts-Bandsman Shayne fracas they closed all doors of the National Sportin' Club at half past eight. The main event wasn't due to get under way till ten, but the galleries and other seats for the middle clawsses and the etc each contained two guys a few minutes after the entrances opened at seven. This Shayne person had a followin' which can only be compared to the one Roosevelt had and they was all there to see their man give the American leather

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 pusher the trimmin' of his young life. The English sports figured the bout would be a spread for their champ, and before my exactin' duties called me to the dressin' room, I had got down five thousand fish on the possibilities of the Kid's right hook to the jaw at 2½ to 1.

The weights was announced as: Kid Roberts, 196½; Bandsman Shayne, 214.

Bandsman Shayne was already in his corner when we come to the party, as I had purposely made him wait for us to see what it would do to his nerves. I was very anxious for my first flash at him, and so was the Kid, but he had so many handlers and the like flittin' around him that it was the same as impossible to view him. Fin'ly the referee called us to the center of the ring for final instructions, and Bandsman Shayne stepped forward, facin' the Kid.

Roberts gave vent to a gasp which could of been and no doubt was heard in Shantung, and, Sweet Papa—I liked to fell through the ropes!

Bandsman Shayne was no less than our old pal and formerly chore boy, "Gunner Enright!"

I don't know whether that referee told us we was allowed to kick and bite in the clinches and that knives would be furnished after the first round or not. I never heard a word he said, for I was gettin' set to clip Bandsman Shayne's grinnin' manager on the button, when the white-faced Kid Roberts shoved me away. The referee raised his eyebrows and coldly motioned me to our corner, where I slumped up against the ropes in a trance. Think what that English—ah

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 —ah—cuckoo had pulled on us! Knowin' we'd never seen the Bandsman, he sends his man up to train for this championship battle with the very man he's gonna fight! A instant's thought will show the dummest bimbo in captivity the priceless advantages Bandsman Shayne win for himself by this raw trick. He's worked out every day with the guy he's gonna face in the ring for the real muss. He's apparently learned every punch, every trick, and every weakness of his comin' versus, whilst at the same time, by skillful fakin' of his own work, he's gave away no information of value on himself. He's givin' us about two minutes to shift our carefully rehearsed and long-planned scheme of battle and he's grabbed off a powerful asset in the moral blow this last-minute discovery handed the Kid, which walked slowly back to his corner waitin' the openin' gong, every muscle doin' a dance, his teeth fastened in his lower lip and his face whiter than eight dollars' worth of cream. They wasn't a dozen guys around that ring which after one searchin' glance wouldn't of bet fifty to one Kid Roberts didn't last a round with the laughin', jokin', and supremely confident Bandsman Shayne. Before I could rouse myself and make a last desperate protest to have the mill called off, the old cowbell rung out.

They hadn't exchanged three wallops before I seen we was in for a rough evenin', if not for crushing defeat! This Bandsman Shayne was a fighter and the Kid was wilder than a Borneo circus attraction. In his desire to end matters at once, Roberts missed a half dozen leads, and the smilin' Bandsman peppered

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 him at short range with rights and lefts to the body that had the Kid flounderin' about the ring, punch drunk and weary before the openin' frame was half over. I don't think Kid Roberts landed four clean wallops durin' the entire session. He simply got off on the wrong foot and couldn't set himself thereafter. Comin' out of a clinch, the Bandsman deliberately butted my boy with his head, layin' his right cheek open and drenchin' him scarlet. The referee politely warned the Englishman in response to my frantic yellsof "Foul!" and, a few seconds ahead of the gong, Shayne connected with a long overhand right to the jaw that sprawled the Kid on his face in a neutral corner. He was on one knee, shakin' his head to clear it and gazin' at me for advice, when the referee had counted "eight" and the welcome bell rung.

They is a mild clappin' of hands around the ringside and some real old-fashioned yells from the galleries whilst we're hustlin' the Kid to his corner and workin' over him. I guess to everybody but me he looked a beaten man! His left eye was completely closed, his lips puffed and swollen, and the gash in his right cheek took five stitches to close. But his wind was still perfect, a cold vicious grin had took the place of the nervous twitchin' of his mouth, and as he shook the water I doused him with from his blond hair he grunted: "This fellow can hit, but I'll get him in the next round!"

Round two opened with the Kid dancin' lightly around the confident Bandsman and suddenly hookin' his right to the head and smashin' his left to the body. The Englishman looked surprised and backed to the

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 ropes cautiously, showin' a beautiful defense for the Kid's determined efforts to hook his right to the jaw. They fiddled around for a minute, each tryin' to connect with one solid smash that would finish it, and then Shayne worked close, leanin' his entire weight on the Kid so's to get the full advantage of that extry seventeen pounds weight. In response to my frenzied yells which caused amazed stares from the ringsiders, Roberts fought himself free and drove Shayne to the ropes with a hurricane of rights and lefts to the head and face. A left swing buried the Kid's glove to the wrist in the Bandsman's short ribs and gaspin', the champ begin to wilt. Roberts feinted swiftly with the same left and then crossed his right to the mouth, bringin' a stream of crimson as the Bandsman begin to tin-can desperately around the ring. Pinned in his own corner, the English mauler showed he was a ring general by pretendin' to be dazed and groggy and slumpin' back against the ropes. The Kid fell for it, and, as he sprang in to finish him, Shayne suddenly straightened up and drove Roberts back on his heels with a perfectly timed right hook, followin' that with four stingin' jabs to the mouth with his left before the astonished Kid could set. It looked like anybody's fight, and they was toe to toe exchangin' wallops at the bell.

The second the Kid is on his stool I am yellin' into his ear; "What's that guy suckin' his lips in for, d'ye know? I been watchin' him all through this round and he keeps puckerin' up like he had somethin' in his mouth. What is it?"

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 The Kid glanced up, kinda puzzled. "I—why—I don't know, I'm sure," he says. "Unless—well, the first punch I landed in this round caught him square on the open mouth. It may be that I loosened one of his teeth and he's drawing on it to get it loose enough to—"

"To get rid of it, to get rid of it!" I hollers. "Just what I had doped out! Now listen to every word I'm gonna say, because it means a quick knockout if you folley my instructions. Pay no attention to any part of this tramp but his mouth! That tooth's gettin' looser and looser and pretty soon it'll come all the ways out and—get this now—he'll turn his face for a second to spit it out! Get that? He'll have to turn his face to one side; it's a natural movement. You keep watchin' him suck away on that tooth. When he turns his face to get rid of it, be set to let him have the right on the button. It's a fifty to one shot, but if you connect, you're heavyweight champion of England!"

The Kid's eyes flashed and he reached a glove for my hand and shook it silently, but hard enough to make it ache for a week. Then the bell brought him off his stool to the center of the ring, where Bandsman Shayne begin peckin' away at his sore eye with the flashiest left I've seen since Jack Johnson's. The Kid snapped over a wallop now and then, but his one good eye was glued to the Bandsman's puckerin' lips, and his deadly right, flickin' back and forth, was ready for immediate use. Suddenly they both started a rally at the same time in mid ring, and after Roberts had drove Shayne's head back six times without a return

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 with right and left hooks, the Englishman had enough and dove into a clinch. They wrestled all over the ring, crashed into the ropes and slid along 'em, the Bandsman hangin' on for his life and the arm-weary Kid desperately tryin' to wriggle free. The referee tore 'em apart in our corner, and the Kid swiftly stuck his left in Shayne's face. The English champ shook his head, worked his lips for a instant, and then twisted his neck slightly as he spat out the tooth. The Kid's right had started with the workin' of the lips and it connected just as Shayne's jaw was swingin' back, addin' double force to the blow which lifted the Bandsman a good three inches off the floor, turned him half around, and brought him to the mat with a crash that shook the buildin', the first part to touch the canvas bein' his shoulder blades.

The referee could of counted a billion. At "ten" the body had scarcely settled. So that was that!

A half hour later we're comin' out of the dressin' room when a silk-hatted, evenin'-dressed, and familiar-lookin' gent busts into us. A close inspection reveals that it is no less than our old shipmate, Senator Brewster. He grabs the Kid, hugs him, waves a American flag, hugs me, jabs another flag into my coat lapel, and in a hoarse voice which he claims he contracted durin' the first round, tells Kid Roberts he has saved his country's honor, E Pluribus Unum and Nux Vomica, and that he personally can lick Bandsman Shayne, all his handlers, and the referee!

"But come on!" he winds up out of breath. "I have a car waiting outside, and we'll all go over to

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 my hotel and—why, say, Dolores won't be able to speak above a whisper for a week! She—"

We're out on the street by this time, and the excited Sen. Brewster is shovin' a path through the half-crazy Americans to a big tourin' car which contains one terrible pretty girl, answerin' to the name of Dolores Brewster, in the rear seat. She puts everything she has on a smile, presents it to the dumfounded Kid.

"Dolores!" he whispers, turnin' to the old man. "Why—what—how—did—what is she doing here? You never brought her to see—"

"She gave me no peace until I did!" grins the happy old gent. "She insisted upon seeing you annihilate the English champion, and, why, in the second round she—"

"My God!" breathes the Kid, lookin' at her. "You saw that bestial exhibition?"

"I most certainly did, Kane," smiles Dolores, with the greatest of enthusiasm. "I'm so glad you won, but of course father and I knew you would. Why, we were sitting only a few yards from the—ah, ring, isn't it?—and father won some huge sum on you, and I didn't think it was brutal at all! Who and where do you fight to-morrow night, dear?"

To-morrow night. Sweet Papa, tie that!

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matter pays as big dividends in the prize ring as it does in any other game, and many's the battle-scarred old veteran is in there now takin' on the top-notchers for big guarantees and stallin' off these hard-hittin' but slow-thinkin' young bruisers by simply outguessin' 'em, just as Christy Mathewson pitched winnin' ball long after he was past his prime by usin' his head as somethin' more than a convenient place to hang his cap. It's a real treat to watch the master ring artist (not the knock-'em-dead slugger) at work. Fast as wireless, cool as a January breeze, merciless as a famished tiger, he can do with a pair of four-ounce gloves what the average guy might accomplish with a baseball bat and a ax. He goes around his man like a co-oper around a barrel, makin' him dizzy with lightin' feints and slashin' him to ribbons with jabs that cut and sting like the flick of a bull whip in the hands of a master mule skinner.

The razzin' of the mob which resents his cleverness and craves blood and knockdowns worries him the same way they worry in Hades over the price of foot warmers. He's there for business, and from his expression you'd think him and the guy he's swappin'

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 wallops with was the only two guys in the world, let alone in the clubhouse.

Does the tramp rock him with a chance smash, and he curls a contemptuous lip over his shoulder at the yowlin' pack whilst he clinches to steady himself, then pushes this boloney away and, with a couple of vicious jolts, makes him back-pedal nervously, wilt, and cover up: He never gets excited, never gets mad enough to miss, never stops studyin' his man's weaknesses till the quarrel's over. Floored, he don't lose his head and bounce up before the referee can begin the arithmetic lesson, like the tramp does when he can in fear of the mob's roar of "Yellah!" Instead, he takes a long count—it uses up precious time and gives him a chance to think, and when he does get up, unless he's out on his his feet, the other guy is due for a lively couple of minutes, if not for a knockout!

From the instant this baby steps out at the openin' clang of the old cowbell, he's a student and a finished workman. He's generally got some plan of battle all doped in advance, but if that don't give him immediate results he shifts to another and another with a speed and skill that gives the real lover of boxin' more genuine thrills than a dozen knockdowns. He finds out whether the other guy don't like it in the jaw or body, and works accordin'ly. He discovers whether his little playmate wilts under rough handlin' in the clinches or if rushin' him to the ropes and pinnin' him there makes him wild with his returns. He tries talkin' to him, shakin' a wicked tongue in a effort to stir the other guy into a crazy rage which will make him throw caution to the breezes and tear in wide open, willin' to risk anything

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 for a chance to stick over a haymaker. Then the old master flits about the maddened slugger, rippin' in stingin' hooks and jabs and keepin' up a runnin' fire of conversation which would make a paralytic rabbit take a punch at a Bengal tiger. Till at length, arm weary and discouraged, the pantin' tramp staggers about the ting a crimson, battered hulk that dully wishes only one thing in this wide, wide world, and that's the sound of the final bell!

Every guy has his weak point—even Adam was a apple addict—and these cool-headed glove artists is no exception. The trouble with these flashy boxers is that nine and seven-eighths times out of ten they can't hit. To jazz a well-known sayin', they can lead their man to slaughter, but they cannot make him sink! And the mob don't want no part of these babies which could box ten rounds under a needle shower without gettin' hit by a drop of water. They want to see somethin' fall, and as a result these cool, shifty scientists never get the popularity that comes to a killer of the Dempsey type.

How the so ever, occasionally up pops a miracle which not only does he pack a opiate in each glove, but he's also got somethin' connected with his dome besides a couple of tin ears. He can box with the boxers, slug with the sluggers, and give the gluttons for punishment acute indigestion. Kid Roberts belonged to this class, and it was usin' his cranium when his right cross wasn't enough in his brawl with Gournet, the French champ, which turned certain defeat into a sudden, sensational win.

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 The Bandsman Shayne mêlée kind of throwed a damper over business for a spell, as the rest of the English fistic stars figured the Kid was too tough for 'em after readin' the punch-by-punch account of that muss. We was about ready to come back to the Home of the Brave when I run into a big English boxin' promoter up at the National Sportin' Club's fights one night. This bird had a concession to put on a mill at no less than Monte Carlo, and by the end of the week I have put up a five-thousand-buck appearance forfeit and signed the Kid to meet anybody the promoter selected for a twenty-round argument at roulette's home town within a month. We was guaranteed twenty thousand iron men and two round-trip tickets, with a privilege of 35 per cent of the gross. Pretty soft, hey?

When I got back to our hut after signin' the articles I found the Kid conspicuous by his absence, so I sit down to look at a bunch of them illustrated sportin' papers without which no American barber shop is properly equipped and which had just been sent to me from home. The first thing that strikes me is how things has changed with the regard to the ads which fills up the back pages. They used to be whole columns of stuff like "Drink Habit Cured with One Dose!" and "Send Us a Buck and We'll Make Him Sober!" but now it's all different. The advertisements which greets the eye these days is: "Own Your Own Still! Complete Brewery, $2," and "Make Your Hooch at Home and Giggle at Prohibition. 3,000 Sure-Fire Recipes, One Case Note!"

Suddenly there is a rap at the door, and I extended the courtesies of our boudoir in a loud but friendly

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 voice. Said door opens, and allows a tall, thin guy of about thirty autumns to ease into the room, remove a pair of yellow gloves, and regard me with a cold and fishy eye. He's wearin' a pair of glasses which looks like spare rims for a flivver, and was dressed in what was like as not the height of fashion somewheres, only I don't know where. A gold-headed cane completes the layout. His openin' remark is a cough. I easily ducked that, and he followed it up with: "As I understand it, I am speaking to the—er—ah—manager of Kane Halli—of Kid Roberts?"

"You are awarded the chiffon ice pick!" I says. "What of it?"

"May I sit down for a moment?" he remarks, glancin' about the room and lettin' forth a slight shudder when he sees the forty-six colored bath robe I had bought for the Kid.

"What d'ye want?" I hollers pleasantly. "Get to the point and be done with it!"

He presents me with a frown and slides into a chair. "I shall get to the point, you may rest assured," he says. "I am a—ah—a friend of Hall—of Kid Roberts, and I have some information to impart to him that—ah—that is so vital to his future welfare that, in order to deliver it to him personally, I have missed my boat connections to Paris."

"That's tough!" I says. "What d'ye want me to do—bust into sobs? The Kid ain't here. Tell me the bad news, and I'll slip it to him the second he comes in."

"That is impossible!" he says, very chilly. "If you are really a—ah—a friend of Roberts, you will find him for me at once!"

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 I got up and looked him over, and he leans back in the chair and begins to tap one hand in the palm of the other and gaze out the window at the city of London. So I put my hat on the place I bought it for and started for the door.

"Who shall I say is seekin' him?" I asks, hesitatin'.

The mysterious stranger turns loose a yawn, reaches into a side pocket, and hands me a card, on which, from the feel to the naked hand, the letters is raised a foot high. Naturally I glanced at it. It says the followin':

 Augustus Robertson-Carrowsmith, 3d.

Sweet Mamma!

"So you're a infielder, hey?" I remarks courteously.

A icy eyebrow goes up. "Beg pardon?" he says.

I waved the card at him. "It says on this you play third, don't it?" I explains.

"Will you be good enough to get Mister—eh—Roberts at once?" he snorts, and gimme a splendid view of his back.

By dumb luck I run into the Kid in the hotel lobby, so I slipped him the card this guy gimme. A short look is all that's needed to make the Kid's naturally fair complexion seven shades lighter and sends his eyebrows into a hard, straight line. He crams the card into his pocket like he wanted to shove it all the ways through, and then follows me into the elevator without a word.

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 When we stepped into our room Mister Agustus Robertson-Carrowsmith, 3d, got up at once and shoved his hand out to the Kid, which was lookin' him up and down very stern and cold.

"Well, Halliday," says Augustus, "I suppose you must guess the purpose of my visit."

"I haven't the slightest idea why I am so honored," answers the Kid, payin' everything but attention to the other guy's outstreched hand. "Make this interview as brief as possible, Carrowsmith!"

Friend Augustus registers what is known far and wide as a blush. "May we have—ah—privacy?" he inquires, with a slight nod at me.

"Say anything you have to say before this gentleman," snaps the Kid. "Only say it quickly!"

"Very well," bows Augustus, 3d, turnin' his back to me to show his cordiality. "Halliday, I have discovered that you are masquerading under the name of—ah—Kid Roberts, and that—you will pardon me, but I must be plain—and that you are a—ah—a common prize fighter!"

"Well?" says the Kid, foldin' his arms and as cold as a icicle.

This here didn't seem to be just what Augustus had expected. I think he figured on creatin' a sensation at the least. However, he bucked up and went on: "I have come to—ah—to offer you a position with us as—as—ah—well, I am sure father will find something for you to do at—ah—at a nominal salary until you—ah—rehabilitate yourself. In a word, I have come to save you from the humiliating position you have—ah—fallen into through your father's unfortunate—ah—failure. I—"

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 "Save your breath," the Kid cuts him off. "I am perfectly content as I am!"

"Content!" gasps Augustus, throwin' up his hands and rollin' his eyes to the ceilin'. "Gad, man—are you insane? Kane Halliday a prize fighter! Think if this should become public property—why, damn it, man, you've got to stop this degrading thing! You owe it to your friends, your college, your—"

"Stop!" roars the Kid, his face whiter than the color itself. "How dare you come here and patronize me, you hound! Your father and his gang of legalized cut-throats stripped me and mine to the bone—picked us up, broke us in bits, and threw us away. Took advantage of friendship, trust, and what none but criminals would call opportunity to ruin us, and you dare to offer me an underling's job where I probably would be getting my weekly pittance from the money you wrung from my own father! I owe nothing to my friends—I have no friends—they scurried away like the rats they were from the sinking ship of my father's fortunes. As to my college, it should be proud of me. At least, it didn't turn out a quitter! I took my medicine and I'm making good now on my own. It'll be a long climb back, but I'll get there, Carrowsmith, and when I get there I'll get you. Now go, or I'll further shock your damned hypocritical dignity by throwing you out of my room!"

Augustus gasped, give a shiver, and tried to make a dignified exit. He failed.

The Kid takes out a handkerchief and wipes his hands carefully, though he hadr't touched this bird

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 child. Recovering from his emotion, he found himself alone. The moon looked down upon him mild, but very sorrowfully; as the Madonna seems to gaze upon her worshipping children, bowed down with consciousness of sin. At this moment he would have given worlds to have disengaged himself from Gertrude; but he had gone so far, that blame, disgrace, and duels with angry relatives would now attend any effort to obtain his freedom. Oh, how the moonlight oppressed him with its friendly sadness! It was like the plaintive eye of his forsaken one, like the music of sorrow echoed from an unseen world. Long and earnestly he gazed at that cottage, where he had so long known earth's purest foretaste of heavenly bliss. Slowly he walked away; then turned again to look on that charmed spot, the nestling-place of his early affections. He caught a glimpse of Clotel, weeping beside a magnolia, which commanded a long view of the path leading to the public road. He would have sprung toward her but she darted from him, and entered the cottage. That graceful figure, weeping in the moonlight, haunted him for years. It stood before his closing eyes, and greeted him with the morning dawn. Poor Gertrude, had she known all, what a dreary lot would hers have been; but fortunately she could not miss the impassioned tenderness she never experienced; and Horatio was the more careful in his kindness, because he was deficient in love. After Clotel had been separated from her mother and sister, she turned her attention to the subject of Christianity, and received that consolation from her Bible that is never denied to the children of God. Although it was against the laws of Virginia, for a slave to be taught to read, Currer had employed an old free negro, who lived near her, to teach her two daughters to read and write. She felt that the

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 at all. Then he glances at his watch and whistles. "Hurry up and get into your evening clothes," he barks at me, startin' the water in the bathtub dnd commencin' to strip. "We're going up to the Savoy, where some of the bunch who were in my class at Yale, and happen to be here, are giving me a little dinner to celebrate my approaching contest with the world's champion."

"Yale guys?" I says. "Why, what tha—why, I thought all them old Elis was off you for life since you become a leather pusher?"

"Why?" inquires the Kid. "Because that little rotter Carrowsmith came here and upbraided me?" He curls his lip. "Don't be an ass! Carrowsmith no more represents the real college spirit than a mongrel hound, for instance, represents the spirit of the blooded dog."

"All right, all right," I cuts him off, "go ahead. I'm glad to hear them babies is regular guys—but where do I fit in this here party?"

"Whither I goest, thou goest!" laughs the Kid. "As my friend and manager, you'll be as welcome as I'll be. Come on, snap into it—you have just about time to shave."

"Nothin' stirrin'!" I says. "I belong at a Yale dinner the same way I belong in the White House! My grammar would never stand up under the strain of bein' allowed to roam wild among a lot of cuckoos with F. O. B., B. A., I. E., and the like tacked after their names."

"Come on!" he grins, givin' me what he prob'ly figured was a playful push and which flopped me on top of the bed. "Don't be a crape hanger all your life. These boys are regular fellows. I know you're going to like them, and they're going to like you!"

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 And, gentle reader, such turned out to be the case. They was half a dozen of them boola-boola birds on hand, most of 'em sons of guys which has $160 for every mongolian in Shanghai, and they all checked up as aces. Anyways you want to look at it, a beaucoup time was had by all with a real gang, and if by some odd coincidence I ever get wed I will ship the plurality of my children to the handiest college, if only for the chance they'll get therein to be regular when they come out!

How the so ever, we met somebody at this dinner which come near costin' Kid Roberts his chance at the world's heavyweight title, about a quarter of a million bucks, and Dolores Brewster. This somebody was the only scrapper in the world I conceded could put Kid Roberts down for the long count. Could trim him without gettin' warmed' up and could trim him to the Queen's taste. Here was a battler which had took 'em all on, regardless of weight, age, color or distance, knocked 'em all kickin', and had never had a scrap that was even close! They all turned into set-ups when they went to the post with this battle-scarred veteran. Why, to give you a idea of just how tough this baby is, they won't even let him fight in America no more! The guy I have reference to is Jack Barleycorn.

Well, Kid Roberts never done nothin' by halves—he never outpointed no guys, he knocked 'em cold—and the next mornin' I catch him orderin' brandy and soda from a bell hop, and he ain't been out of bed five minutes. I give the bell hop the air, and when the Kid banged out of the room a half hour later we was both hoarse, and he had swore that his scrap at Monte Carlo

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 was his last under my management. Still in that humor, he called on Miss Dolores Brewster and managed to get himself in wrong with her. This released the last brake the Kid had on himself, and when I fin'ly dug him up at midnight in a extry swell Piccadilly booze emporium he was buyin' for one and all, and if W. J. Bryan had seen the shape he was in he'd of bust out cryin'. A young army officer which had trailed around with the Kid all night told me they had been gave the raspberry at the Carlton when the Kid climbed up on the bar, announced himself as the only son of Old King Cole, and demanded that a covey of fiddlers be sent to him at once.

Kid Roberts opens a watery eye about noon the next day, drinks between four and twenty-one gallons of ice water, and apologizes to the world at large. He listens to my bawlin' out in silence whilst shavin', and then he sit down and wrote about ninety telegrams to Miss Dolores Brewster, sendin' one. They was no answer, and fin'ly, by the via of the telephone, he found out that Dolores and her dad had gone to Paris, leavin' no word for him what the so ever.

From then on I had my hands full keepin' this big kid within the bounds of reason and away from the festive brew. I give him lectures which would of got me thirty solid weeks on any Chautauqua circuit in the world, and I endeavored to keep right on his back from the time the alarm clock made good in the mornin' till we set the thing at night. But there was times when he managed to slip away, and by the day we hit Monte Carlo, with the battle less than a week off, constant cigarette

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 smokin' had ruined his wind, he was flabby and out of condition, and he didn't give a trout's foot whether he fought Gournet, the guy the English promoter had picked to meet him, or not.

I knew that Dolores Brewster's father would be at the ringside, because the old guy was a blown-in-the-flask fight bug and had promised the Kid he would be there, after seein' him flatten the English champ a few weeks before. Whilst talkin' to us after that brawl Senator Brewster had also let fall the information that he always stopped at the Hotel Crillon when in the city which added "oo-la-la" to our language. So, in a loud and desperate voice I called on a woman for help for the first time in my life. I sit down and wrote a long letter to Miss Dolores Brewster, tellin' her that since her and the Kid fell out he was goin' to Gehenna at a speed which would make a nervous greyhound look like a crippled snail. I explained just what he was doin', just what was at stake, and that I was playin' her as my last card. I also worked in the fact that unless Kid Roberts pulled himself together at once, this French battler would murder him, and the disgrace would bury him, addin' that the Kid's future was in her hands and that a mere note from her with a couple of "dears" and a few mentions of the preposition "love" in it would make everything Jake.

I mailed the above to the Hotel Crillon and give myself up to the art of wishin'.

Well, I run a dead heat with Aladdin, and he had a lamp. The day of the bout no less than Dolores Brewster breezed into Monte Carlo herself! This was beyond

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 my wildest nightmares, and I was over to the hotel she phoned me from in one runnin' jump. In the lobby I bump into "Honest Joe" Hammond, which, with a bunch of other globe-trotters in his line, is makin' book on the fight.

"What about this muss?" he says, pullin' me aside before I can duck him. "I'm layin' three to one Roberts cops, but I'm gettin' a big play from some American and English jobbies on this Gournet guy. It don't sound reasonable. Are you levelin' with the Kid in this one?"

"We level in all of 'em!" I says. "You see what's goin' on, and you know as much as I do. The Kid's gone cuckoo and ain't trained a day—that's the low down between you and me—but we have cooked nothin' up. Would I be liable to lay down to this Frog with a crack at the world's title in sight? The Kid ain't in condition, but—"

"I don't care if he's on crutches!" butts in "Honest Joe." "If you're tryin', that's all I wanna know. So far I'll go to the cleaners for sixty thousand men if Kid Roberts don't ash home in front. So you can see!"

I reached in my pocket and handed him a roll of fifteen one-thousand-buck notes, or "grands," as them addicted to slang calls 'em.

"Bet this for me, Joe," I says, "at them 3 to 1 odds you was talkin' about, and take 2 per cent of the loot for your commission. How 'bout that?"

"Honest Joe" merely scribbled a receipt, gimme it, grinned, and drifted away.

An hour later me and Miss Dolores Brewster is in the world's famous casino where every time the roulette wheel stops spinnin' somebody goes cuckoo

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 with either joy or grief. From all the reliable reports we can get, Kid Roberts is in there somewheres—six hours before he fights Monsieur Henri Gournet, heavyweight champion of France!

I planted Dolores Brewster in a little loungin' room off the big gamblin' saloon, whilst I shoved hithers and you through the mob lookin' for the Kid. On my travels I pass to one side of a bird which looks terrible familiar, and in a second I got him pegged as no less than this Carrowsmith stiff which bawled the Kid out in London for bein' a pug. Him and a couple of French guys, all fairly well lit up, is chatterin' away and I was all set to eavesdrop a bit when I see Dolores makin' her way to the long roulette table in the middle of the big room.

I was beside the Kid's future bride when she pushed her way through the hysterical mob around the table to the back of the Kid's chair. Even the wildest of 'em give way for Dolores after one look, and I heard many's the gasp which the turn of the roulette wheel had nothin' to do with! At the right of the Kid was a bunch of hard-lookin' guys, leanin' almost on top of him, apparently watchin' his play and makin' cracks to each other in French. I didn't like the way they was lookin' at the Kid and then at each other, but I didn't get no chance to take that part of it up, because Dolores leaned right over the Kid and whispered somethin' in his ear.

For a instant he looked straight ahead with his eyes starin' open and his jaw droppin' like he couldn't believe his ears. Then he got slowly up, swung around,

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