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 "Perfect!" I says. "The last X-ray shows it's all healed and they's nothing to stop me now from going back into the ring and getting it broke again!"

Judy laughs—like the tinkle of little bells. Then she gets a bit serious. "I hate to think of you going back to the prize ring, Gale," she says. "That was terrible—getting your jaw broken. Why, you might be crippled for life at any time! When are you going to give up boxing? It—it would please me a lot if you would, Gale."

"Judy," I says, "to please you I'd dive off the top of Washington's Monument into a glass of water! You know that. But I got to say it with right hooks till I get a little bigger bank roll and a little better line on what I was born to panic the world at. I don't seem to know just what my trick is yet—I'm what you might call experimenting. I don't want to go back of the soda fountain again, that's a cinch! So I'm just looking around. Boxing is keeping me alive and paying for this synthetic education I'm getting, while I'm trying to find out the thing I do best."

But Judy seems to be peeved. "There are plenty of other things you could do besides boxing," she says slowly, after a minute. She's pulling a cute little handkerchief back and forth between the most beautiful little hands in captivity. "You have a good appearance, personality, and enough intelligence to overcome the—the few rough edges left from your premature contact with the world. I'm sure you would not have the slightest difficulty in getting a good position with a future, almost anywhere. Why—" she


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 breaks off, with a short, nervous laugh—"why, even I have managed to get a job!"

Ain't it horrible that a girl like that has got to work?

"You did, eh?" I says, nothing but ears. "Where?"

Judy gets as red as red itself. She kind of turns her face away from me and I got a sudden premonition that they's a highly unpleasant surprise coming. I am 100 per cent right!

"I'm—I'm going to work in the office of Dempster & Co.," she says, trying to appear careless about it and flopping hard.

Well, you could of knocked me down with a wagon tongue! Going to work for Rags Dempster's old man and Rags himself is now working in the same office, learning the business. Honest, for a minute I'm fit to be tied!

Judy busts up the painful pause. "What's the matter, Gale, are you ill?" she says. But she well knows what's the matter!

"No," I says, "I'm sick. Why, Judy, you can't go to work for Rags Dempster's father!"

Up goes Judy's maddening eyebrows and you should of felt the chill in the air: "Oh!" she says. "I can't? Why not?"

"Because—because I—Judy, you know Rags is overboard over you, and him getting you that job is just a scheme of his to—to keep you near him!" I bust out. "As the matter and fact, I must give that dizzy stiff credit for a nifty play, but I ain't going to let him get away with it! Why he'll pester you to death, Judy, and"

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 "What on earth are you talking about?" butts in Judy, in well fained and a bit angry surprise. "Rags had nothing to do with my getting a position in his father's office. I applied there and was engaged by Mr. Young, the head clerk. As for Rags pestering me, well, Gale, I feel quite capable of taking care of myself under any and all circumstances. What right have you to question my actions?"

"In other words, what you do is none of my business, hey?" I says.

"You're not my brother, Gale," says Judy—and the thermometer slides down past zero.

"I don't doubt that," I says. "But I thought I was your boy friend. I guess women is all alike!"

"Indeed!" says Judy, a bonfire in each eye. "You seem to know a lot about women, Mister Gale."

Mister!

"I'm off women for life, Miss Willcox," I says in a dignified way. "I am convinced that the fellow which understands women can also understand what a couple of flies says to each other when they meet on a window-pane! You know Rags Dempster hates the ground I walk on, and yet you go to work with him in his father's office—like that was the only job in the United States of America. It looks like you are giving me a pushing around, Miss Willcox. O. K.—don't be surprised if you read in to-night's paper where I have left for—for Gehenna, or some distant country like that. You made me what I am to-day; I hope you're satisfied!"

With these few remarks, I turn on my rubber heel


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 and march haughtily down the stairs into the great outdoors. I can be as hard as a rock when I want to. Beautiful women has no effect at all on a fellow of my type, and I made up my mind I would apologize to Judy and get squared up with her at supper that night no matter what concessions I have to make, up to and including my right eye!

I ain't taken three steps up the street when low and behold who do I run into but Rags Dempster. I start to pass him by, but he furnishes me with the surprise of my life by stopping me and holding out his hand with a smile.

"Let's—eh—bury the hatchet, Galen," he says, in that smooth, oily voice of his. "It seems rather silly for us to keep up this childish feud, now, doesn't it?"

I am busy thinking, will wonders never cease? I know there's a catch in it somewheres, but still and all I shake his damp, flabby hand because I'm always ready to meet anybody half-ways. I let go Rags's hand and he takes out a gold cigarette case, tapping a cigarette on it, while his smile grows into a wide satisfied grin. "Besides," he says, with a odd glance at me—"besides, the—eh—matter we fell out about is pretty well settled now."

I can feel the hair raising on the back of my neck! "What matter, Rags?" I says, looking him right in the eye—no small feat, as Rags's eyes is of a wandering variety.

"The matter of Judy—Miss Willcox," he says, lighting his cigarette and trying to carry the thing off as a mere nothing. "She's going to work in our office,


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 you know, in my department, and—well, Miss Willcox and myself have known each other a long time, Gale, and I don't suppose my feelings regarding her are much of a secret to you. I thought I'd save you a lot of—eh—a lot of embarrassment, by telling you now that I expect to marry Miss Willcox this winter!"

I can feel I'm as pale as a quart of skim milk and I could of kick myself for not being able to stop my voice from trembling.

"Has Judy—are you and Judy engaged?" I stammer.

Rags's beady, gloating eyes tells me he's enjoying my misery to his full capacity. He takes plenty time to answer.

"We—e—ll, not exactly engaged," he drawls. "But"

"But, nothing, you big stiff!" I cut him off, and my voice ain't trembling now. I'm burnt up, for a fact! "If Judy ain't promised to wed you, where d'ye get that stuff about expecting to marry her this winter? The best thing you can do is to leave Judy alone, get me? If she ever tells me that you're trying to take advantage of the miracle that she's working for you, I'll slap you for a Chinese ash can!"

Thus endeth the first lesson.

That night, as they say in the movies, I nailed Judy after supper and apologized for the way I talked to her earlier in the day. She changes like the wild winds, she does for a fact. She ain't a bit sore, and she's the one which suggests sitting out in the hammock on the dark back porch to talk matters over. I think both my ears is liars when she asks me, but we go and sit


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 there and after a while a idea hits me right in the head—a idea which to me is the snake's hips! It's no less than a way for Judy to turn down the job in the carpet factory office and still eat and what not.

"Judy," I says, "the only reason you're going to work for Rags Dempster's father is because you got to take a job somewheres, ain't it? I mean it ain't because you particularly like Rags or nothing like that—am I right?"

"I thought we settled all that this afternoon, Gale," says Judy, beginning to freeze. "I think we're letting this conversation grow too personal again. I am going to work for Dempster & Co. because it's right here in Drew City and I have been offered a very good salary—and why I'm allowing you to catechize me like this, I don't know!"

"It's a mystery to me too," I says pleasantly. "However, what I'm getting at is this, Judy. If you had a chance to take another job in Drew City at more wages, would you take it instead?"

"Rather!" smiles Judy.

"Then that Dempster & Co. job is out!" I says joyfully, "Judy, I now hereby offer you the position of my secretary at the salary of fifty bucks a week to commence, with a chance of advancement. No experience is necessary and"

But Judy has bust out laughing. "Oh, you funny boy!" she says, looking at me through dancing eyes. Then she gazes out into the night. "I wonder what I'll eventually do with you?" she remarks softly to the big oak opposite the house.


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 Now that's a funny crack, ain't it? What will she do with me? I'm trying to figure that one out, when she lays her beautiful hand on mine, which is only beautiful in a four-ounce glove.

"That's a splendid offer, Gale," she says, "and I'd be tempted to snap it up, only I know why you've made it to me. You don't need a secretary yet, though I know the day will come when you'll have half a dozen secretaries in your own big office. I often visualize you sitting at your desk, directing the destiny of some tremendous business, Gale—don't you yourself?"

"I don't know, Judy," I says. "I'd rather direct your dest—eh"

I'm getting in over my head, so I kind of trailed off!

"Yes, Gale?" says Judy, all attention.

But I'm afraid to gamble with her! I'll tell you why. If I ever lost Judy's friendship, I'd of cooked myself, as sure as you can get good and moist by falling into the ocean. I once read in a book about a couple like me and Judy which was the best of pals till the fellow hauls off one day and asks the girl to wed him. This spilled the beans, because the girl looks sad and shakes her head, saying, to the best of my knowledge: "Oh, Jack, how could you! Our lovely friendship is now broke up—we can never be the same again since you went to work and asked me that! Why couldn't we of remained just chums?" And the guy gets the air. So I held my tongue and played safe, turning the conversation to Rags.

"It looks to me, Judy," I says, "as if you're kidding me about what you really think of Rags Dempster.


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 You turn down my offer of a job and take his and the best I can get is a laugh! D'ye know he's going around telling people he expects to marry you this winter?"

Judy's face is like fire. "Where did you hear that tidbit?" she asks.

"Rags told me himself," I says. "I told him if he bothered you when you went to work in his office, I'd knock him dead."

Judy jumps up out of her hammock. If she ain't mad, then she's a wonderful actoress. "I wish you and Rags would stop discussing me as though I were a—a town character!" she says, ninety below zero. "And I am not in need of a protector. You've made it very embarrassing for me by threatening Rags, and I'd be glad if you'd wait until I ask you before delivering ultimatums for me. I haven't the slightest intention of marrying Rags, or—or anyone, ever!"

And she flounces into the house.

If I got a dollar for every time I got in wrong, I'd have a Rockefeller gnashing his teeth inside of a given year!

Well, for the next few days me and Judy don't exchange half a dozen words, and she even takes to eating her meals either before or after me, so's we don't meet at the table. This kind of treatment steams me up to the point where I have almost decided to move from Mrs. Willcox's boarding house to a New York hotel, when Nate busts into my room one day and hollers he has finally signed me for a fight. The victim's name in round numbers is "Wild Bill" Killoran, which has broke down and confessed to being light heavy-


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 weight champion of the Pacific Coast. The quarrel is to be staged at the Eureka A. C. in New York, fifteen frames to a decision. I am to get five thousand bucks even—win, lose, draw, or what have you.

I will have to spot Wild Bill at least ten pounds, and from all accounts he's a sweet puncher and nobody's fool. Likewise, this will be my first battle in three months, so I start in training at once for William. Spence Brock is then a inmate of Princeton and his millionaire dad is still taking a interest in me. Both of 'em goes to nearly all my fights, and I have been up to the emperor's palace they call their home half a dozen times, talking over my future with Mr. Brock. I always left him with a little more stuff and a little more ambition than I had when I went up to see him. He is certainly one wonderful man and a billion ain't a dime too much for him!

Well, I am talking to Mr. Brock one day a little while after Judy has apparently broke off diplomatic relations with me, and during the course of the conversation I tell him I think I will leave Drew City flat on its back, as these small burgs cramps my style. Another thing, now that the sweetest girl in all the world has give me the air, why, I don't think they's enough opportunities in a trap like Drew City for a fellow of my speed. The way I checked up then, I felt it wasn't going to be no great length of time before I retired from the ring and tried my luck in some game which is less wearing on the features. I had $5,475 in the First National Bank, a $1,800 chumpy roadster, and I was getting around five thousand fish every time I


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 crawled through the ropes. So I figure I belonged in a hick burg like Drew City the same way a submarine belongs to a bathtub.

But, to my great surprise, Mr. Brock is against me leaving Drew City to take my chances in New York. He tells me the rumor that opportunity knocks once on every man's door is a true one and a ambitious boy don't have to rush off to the city to make his fortune. He himself got his start in a small town, Irontown, Pa., where he's then president of the big locomotive works, after he'd starved trying to knock New York for a goal.

"The fallacy that success is to be found only in the big cities has sent many a promising young man home from them to his native village, beaten and discouraged," he says, chewing on a cigar which costs some heavy money but which for some reason he never lights.

"Some of them have then gone ahead to fame and fortune, proving, of course, that success is never a matter of environment, but of the man! Knut Hamsun, who a couple of years ago won the fifty-thousand-dollar Nobel Prize in literature, could rise no higher than a street-car conductor in Chicago. Lipton drove a horse car in New Orleans, Clemenceau started as a teacher in New York, Masefield was a bartender there. Yet all those men, giving up the struggle in the big cities, returned to their home towns and made their names known to the far corners of the earth! You can do the same, Galen. Never mind New York—the cities have broken far more men than they've ever


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 made! Look about you here, where you have friends and an open, clean record of progress under the most adverse conditions. There's less competition in Drew City and when you discover your 'trick,' as you call it, you will find an interested and sympathetic audience. I, for one, am always ready to give you my attention and help!"

Well, after that I just chased New York right out of my mind, and I bet you would of too. With a man like that in my corner I'd be a dumbell indeed to leave Drew City without making a two-handed attempt to put myself over in it, now wouldn't I?

Well, the day I am to swap wallops with Wild Bill Killoran finally rolls around as days will and we break camp at noon, so's to be ready to leave Drew City on 85, the 4.06 p. m. local. As usual, Mr. Brock has a ringside box and he takes Spence and a party of friends from Wall Street with him, so I'm anxious to win this battle in jig time, as whenever I do, Mr. Brock beams around at his friends and acts like he had win the fight himself.

I'm all packed and ready to leave my room, when they comes a familiar knock on the door—a knock which makes me drop my suit-case and gets me tingling all over. I flang the door wide open and there's Judy, smiling at me like she did the first time I ever seen her nearly three years before, standing in the same spot. It's a funny thing, but although I see Judy nearly every day of my life I just can't get used to her pulse-quickening beauty and take her as a matter of course. Every time she comes near me I get a thrill, I do for


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 a fact! So I just stand there and gape at her like a boob, and I guess my face must of been a show window for my feelings, because she gets a very becoming shade of red.

"I just wanted to wish you luck, Gale," she says. "You will be careful of your jaw, won't you? I—I'd rather have you lose than get hurt!"

"Thanks, Judy," I says. "It's sure fine of you to give me a—eh—to care what happens to me, and you coming up to say good-bye was all I needed to put me in perfect condition for this scuffle. I ain't going to lose, and I ain't going to get hurt either. I'll just go in there thinking of you and I'll put this Killoran out for so long that when he comes to his shoes won't fit him!"

Judy laughs, and then she gives me a look which starts my heart trying the difficult feat of leaping right out through my ribs. It looks like anything might happen, when this big stiff Nate Shapiro bawls up the stairs for me to snap into it or I'll miss the train. What do I care about missing a train, when they's a chance of me getting in right with Judy again? Say—I'd miss a whole railroad for one smile from this panic!

Well, like it says in the old pome, Twas a balmy summer's evening and a goodly crowd was there" when I crawl through the ropes at the Eureka A. C. with the intentions of knocking Mr. Wild Bill Killoran for a row of shanties. Kayo Kelly and "Two-Punch" Jackson is looking after me and I get a pretty fair hand from the mob as I sit down on my stool. I see Spence and his father in their box and we exchange


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 hand waves and a little farther back I pick out Rags Dempster with some of his cronies. In this case stony stares is exchanged. Wild Bill Killoran is already in the ring, and from where I sit he looks like a tough egg, he does for a fact! The weights is announced as 162½ for me and 174 for my charming adversus. This draws some moans from the crowd, but a twelve-pound handicap means nothing in my young life. I figure I'll soon cut Wild Bill down to my size, and after that, a little lower.

Wild Bill starts right out after my goat when we get called to the middle of the ring for instructions. "Do I walk to my corner and wait for the count every time I knock this guy down?" he says to the referee.

"Be yourself, you big boloney!" I snarled. "The only thing you ever knocked down in your life is nickels when you was a street-car conductor. You'll go out of here to-night on a shutter!"

"Shut up!" says the referee to both of us. "Fight with your hands!"

Then the fun began.

Wild Bill shows where he got his name by charging out of his corner like a wounded lion at the bell. He was short with a terrific right swing, and when I duck under his left it whizzed by the panic-stricken referee's ear, only missing him by a scant inch and dumb luck! The crowd howls with joy. I leaped in with a hard left to the head and shot a stiffer right to the heart before Wild Bill knew what it was all about. He looked surprised and begin backing to the ropes, with me following, cautiously. "C'mon, fight!" I grin at


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 him, and he answers with a murderous right hook to the body which shook me from head to toe and satisfied me that he was one sweet socker and not no bonbon eater by no means! I dove into a clinch, and, when the referee broke us, Nate yells for me to box and not slug. I nod my head and begin to left-hand Wild Bill all over the ring. Killoran couldn't cope with me at this, and in a minute he's tincanning from pillar to post, with me following him up and cutting him to ribbons. Following Nate's instructions, I clinched every time Wild Bill tried to mix matters up, and the bell found us in mid ring, with me pecking away at Wild Bill's crimson profile and Wild Bill punching holes in the air. I run to my corner with a broad smile on my face, a smile I had worn since the opening bell.

But the hard-boiled mob which had give up their jack to see assault and battery give me the royal raspberry for boxing Killoran instead of standing toe to toe and slugging with him. During the rest, some of 'em howled for me to take a chance, and I remarked to Nate that I'm going out in the second frame and see who can hit the hardest, me or Wild Bill.

"You'll do nothin' of the kind!" snaps Nate, sponging me off. "You do what I tell you, never mind the crowd—we're fightin' this baby, not them cheap squawkers out there! Keep makin' him miss and he'll soon tire. Box him. And lookit, take 'at grin off your pan! It don't mean nothin', and it'll get you a razzin' when this guy shakes you up and you forget to smile. They'll holler: 'Where's 'at smile now, Smith?'


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 and it'll rattle you. You do the fightin' and let me do the laughin', get me?"

Killoran come out fast for the second round, but I kept beating him to the punch, stabbing him in the face with my left time after time and then crossing my right to wherever I see a opening. About a minute after the bell, I socked Killoran flush on the jaw with a short inside right and his knees buckled under him. The customers shriek for me to knock him for a row of silos, but he's hanging on to me with both arms like he's drowning. It took the referee quite a spell to tear Wild Bill away from me, and when he did let go his head come up and bumped mine, opening up a old cut over my right eye.

The referee warns him and the crowd hisses, but none of that stops the blood from that cut from blinding me on that side of my face. This butting business gets me red-headed and I tied into Killoran with everything I had in stock! I shot my left to his bobbing head five times without a return and then took a glancing right to the jaw to bury my own right in his stomach. Wild Bill stumbled away and crashed to the mat, face down. When they drop from a body punch they're hurt, and that's a fact! Remember that the next box fight you see. He managed to beat the count and was braced against the ropes, set for a trip to dreamland, when the bell rang.

The third round was the last and the best one of the fight, from the crowd's angle. Wild Bill was sent out to risk everything on landing a knockout punch, and I went in with the objects of stopping him with a couple


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 of blows. The result was just a little more action, with less principals, than they was at the battle of Santiago! I closed Killoran's left eye with the first wallop, but took a vicious right to the mouth in return which loosened a couple of teeth and drew blood. Devoting my attention to Wild Bill's mid-section, I tossed in a right and left which made Bill say "How do you do?" and a right uppercut knocked him a long ways from normalcy. The average boy would of been through for the evening by this time, but Wild Bill was tougher than a life sentence in solitary confinement! He just shook his head and bored in, ripping both hands to my wind and pretty soon I'm as red between the neck and belt as if somebody had hit me with a bottle of catsup and it broke.

I shift my attack and begin taking shots at Killoran's jaw with my right. One of 'em got through his clumsy defense and he tottered back against the ropes, plainly in distress. He looks around to his corner for advice, and I didn't clout him when his head was turned, though Nate and the mob yelled for me to paste him and razzed me most heartily when I didn't. We boxed carefully for a few seconds, when suddenly Killoran whips over a long left which lands a good two inches below my belt. The crowd roars when I stagger back, biting my lips with the pain and pressing both gloves over the place where that foul punch landed. Oh, I was hurt bad and no mistake! I looked at the referee, and he hesitates a minute while the place is in a uproar and then he taps Wild Bill on the shoulder, warning


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 him. A lot of good that done me and the babies which had bet on me!

I am in so much pain and so crazy mad that I can't see straight, but I rushed at Wild Bill with what might be called evil thoughts in my brain. I missed two rights, but connected with a left hook to the heart that spun Killoran around like a top. Seeing the shape I'm in, Wild Bill gets a new lease on life and stung me with two sizzling rights to the chin and a left uppercut that nearly tore my head off. Well, I can't really untrack myself till I'm hurt, as Mr. Killoran soon found out! I rushed him to the ropes and took all the fight out of him with a torrid right swing to the wind. He starts to back pedal and I dropped him to his knees with a one-two punch to the jaw. He waited for "nine" and then he got up, groggy. All I can hear around me is: "Knock him out, Smith! Knock the big stiff out!" and "Go on, kid, take him!"

I set myself to oblige the cash customers, when Killoran deliberately crashes his right below my belt again. This time the foul did the business! I got dizzy and awful sick at my stomach and kind of slid slowly to the floor, doubled over in a knot like a pretzel. The crowd has went crazy and lots of 'em are rushing for the ring, but they don't bother me because the pain has drove me crazier than they are! The next thing the referee is chasing Killoran to his corner and telling the maniacs out in front that I have win the fight on a foul. Then Nate and Kayo Kelly is bending down over me and somebody says: "Let the doctor pass through here, you guys!"


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Rh this. Think on yourselves and on your wrongs. Doth not the death of your kinsmen and all the hardship grieve the minds of you good knights? Alas, what great dole Rüdeger’s death doth give me! Never in all the world hath more of sorrow happed to any man. Ye thought but little on me and on your pain. Whatsoever joy I had, that lieth slain by you. Certes, I never can bewail my kin enow.”

“Forsooth we be not so guilty,” answered Hagen. “Your warriors came to this hall in a large band, armed with care. Methinks the tale hath not been told you rightly.”

“What else should I believe? Hildebrand told me, that when my knights from the Amelung land asked that ye should give up Rüdeger’s corse from out the hall, ye did naught but mock the valiant heroes from above the steps.”

Then spake the king from the Rhine: “They said, that they would fain bear Rüdeger hence, and I bade this be denied them to vex King Etzel, and not thy men, until then Wolfhart began to rail about it.”

Then the hero of Berne made answer: “Fate would have it so. Gunther, most noble king, now through thy courtesie requite me of the wrongs, that have happed to me from thee, and make such amends, brave knight, that I may give thee credit for the deed. Give thyself and thy men to me as hostages, and I will guard you, as best I may, that none here do thee aught among the Huns. Thou shalt find me naught but good and true.”

“Now God forbid,” quoth Hagen, “that two knights give themselves up to thee, that still do stand opposed


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 At this critical point I passed out for the time being.

When I come to I am in the dressing room with my handlers busy working over me. Nate is standing beside me with a serious look on his face.

"What did I do—get knocked?" I says, kind of dazed.

Nate grins and commences to tell me what happened, and though I'm still kind of goofy I gradually remember Killoran fouling me. The pain, which is coming back, is a great aid to my memory. Well, I am good and mad and don't think I ain't. I don't want to win no fights like that—I want to knock 'em dead or get knocked dead—no draws or referee's decisions, or newspaper verdicts means anything to me! Then who walks into the dressing room but Mr. Wild Bill Killoran, some sport writers, Rags Dempster, and Spence Brock.

"What's the idea?" snorts Nate, running to the door. "We ain't giving no party here!"

"Just wanted to see how badly your boy was hurt, that's all Nate," says one of the newspaper guys.

"Hurt?" sneers Wild Bill, shoving his ugly face up to me. "Where would he get hurt? He didn't like it, that what's the matter with him! He got away with murder, claimin' that foul. The punch that put him down landed on that glass jaw of his!"

"That's correct, gentlemen," butts in Rags Dempster to the reporters. "I saw the blow land!"

"You're a liar!" hollers Nate. "As for you, you big yellah hound—" he begins, turning to Wild Bill.


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 "I'll knock you stiff, too, if you open your mouth to me!" butts in Killoran, swinging around on Nate.

Well I'm boiling over, so I get up. "You won't knock nothing stiff!" I says to Wild Bill, "I had you steadied for a knockout when you deliberately fouled me, not once, but twice. I don't like to win fights that way. I like to win 'em this way!"

With that, I shot out my left and Killoran's head snapped back. The bunch yells and begins milling around us and Wild Bill caught me on the ear with his ungloved right first. But I knew where he couldn't take it, so I ripped both hands to his wind. He bent over and I measured him with another left which straightened him up and then crashed a terrible right to his chin. He floundered backward into the reporter for the "News," and when the reporter stepped quickly away, Wild Bill slid to the floor, dead to the world. So I got my knockout after all!

Nate found out later that Rags had dropped a thousand bucks on the fight, betting Wild Bill would stop me before the limit. I certainly was sorry to hear that. I wish he had dropped a million!

On the way back to Drew City, I get to thinking again about Judy going to work for Rags Dempster's old man. They must be some way to prevent that from coming to pass, I keep telling myself, and then all of a sudden I sit up straight in my seat. I got a idea again! Nate's stable was then composed of half a dozen leather pushers, including me, and when I wasn't fighting or studying I was doping out different ways of getting publicity for all of us. In fact, I cooked up several


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 pieces which Nate managed to get on the sporting pages, making him think I was the turtle's wings as a press agent. There was also a whole lot of correspondence connected with matching us up for fights and Nate had been taking all his letters over to the Commercial House and having Mary Ballinger write 'em. Well, my idea was to have Nate open up a regular office in Drew City like all the big-time fight managers does in New York, put in a filing system, telephone, desks, and all this sort of thing and hire a girl, to viz., Judy, to take charge, answer mail and the etc.

At first Nate says not so good, because he loves to keep down expenses, but after a while when I says'll split Judy's salary with him, why, he gives in.

I don't say nothing at all to Judy till a week later, when we got our office in the First National Bank Building all set. Then I drive her over to see it. Well, she's just delighted, that's all, and right there's where I butt in with my offer of a job as stenographer extraordinary and secretary plenipotentiary. Judy begins to hedge and says am I sure we are doing enough business for all this outlay, and I says wait till she sees the mail we get every day and she'll think we're running a puzzle contest. Finally, after plenty argument, she agrees to come over with us, with the proviso that if they ain't enough work to give us a excuse to pay her fifty a week, she'll leave us flat. I ask her can I go with her to see Rags Dempster's face when she quits his office and tells him where she's going to work and she says absolutely no, but she laughs.

Well, the very first day Judy's on the job I get a


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 tough break. She's waiting for the sacks of mail to come in so's she can answer it and earn her jack and all the letter man brings us is a bill for the office furniture. She shakes her head and starts for her hat, and the thought that she's going to quit after I have went to all this trouble to keep her under my wing nearly floors me. But I am a idea-getting fool! We're alone in the office and I called across the room to her:

"Just a moment, Miss Willcox! You was supposed to take dictation and the like here, was you not?"

She looks surprised at the tone of my voice and the "Miss Willcox," but she nods her head yes.

"O. K.," I says, very stern. "Kindly be so kind as to sit down at that typewriter. I got a important letter to get off and this has all the earmarks of a busy morning!"

With a kind of a puzzled look at me, Judy takes off her hat, sits down at the typewriter, takes up a pad and pencil and stares at me.

"All right," she says. "I'm ready!"

I cleared my throat. "Take this letter," I says. "To Whom It May Concern—Mr. Gale Galen, nee Six-Second Smith, future light heavyweight champion of the world and even more future business king, would like to announce that he is—is—eh—wildly in love with—with—a certain party by the name of—of—eh—just leave that space blank!"

"But—but I've already filled it in!" says Judy—and then she gets as red as a four-alarm fire and would of tore the paper up, but I snatched it out of her hand.

I'm spreading it out on the desk, when Judy's voice


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 stops me. "Gale," she says, "do you want me to stay here?"

"I'll say so!" I says.

"Then tear that paper up without reading it—instantly!"

I had it tore before the last word left her beautiful mouth, Say, ain't girls funny? Why did she write in her name if she didn't want me to see it? While she was in the act of doing it, I seen her write down "Judy Willcox" on her pad, right after "I am wildly in love with a certain party by the name of—" I didn't study shorthand at that business school for nothing, or write Judy's name in that language eight hundred times without knowing what the shorthand marks is for it, when we made 'em up ourselves!


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soon I will have a education which don't have to take it's hat off to nobody, yet the nearest I ever been to college was when I slap Kid Michaels stiff in Cambridge, Mass., and I'm forced to pass Harvard on the ways to the fight club. I am plying myself with knowledge of this and that by the kind assistance of books, for the reasons that I would like to pass a fight club some day on the ways to Harvard.

Having Judy in our office where I could see her all day long was like putting a ham bone just out of reach of a chained collie. But I figured I'd bust that chain with education, ambition, and a six-figure bank roll.

I am plowing through a serial the other night called "Fortunate," by Mr. Ludwig Tieck, a poet which did his stuff when you and I were young, Maggie, and he says: "To a sensible man, there is no such thing as chance!"

Ludwig said a mouthful. Personally, I'm satisfied that luck and chance is snares and delusions, as whosthis says. The fellow which has reached the top of the heap and is called a lucky stiff by the failures is simply lucky in having the determination to work hard, the ability to laugh off discouragement, and the


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 pep to keep the rust off his ambition. Having gave luck a thorough tryout, I am in the position to tell you something about it. Depending on luck cost me—but I might as well spill the whole business and be done with it!

A few days after I stop Larry Forbes—a tough egg—in five rounds at Philadelphia, Nate gets a cable from Mr. Haskins, the big English promoter, offering us three fights at the National Sporting Club, London, Eng., where the Prince of Wales must be getting sick and tired of feeling English heavies: "Better luck next time!" Well, naturally enough, this little incident gets me all excited. I had never been farther away from the United States than Coney Island, being too young at the time the draft was all the rage, and here's what has all the earmarks of a chance to tour Europe. So I hop in my nifty chumpy roadster and go to our office to talk this European expedition over with Judy.

She's sitting at her desk giving our brand-new typewriter a cuffing and she looks sweeter to me than a glass bowl shortage would look to a goldfish.

"Good morning, Judy," I says, putting down with the greatest of difficulty a wild impulse to kiss her. "Speaking of anchovies. I'm going to London!"

The clicking keys stops like magic. Judy looks up at me and they's plenty surprise inlaid in her navy-blue eyes as she lays down her notes.

"Of course, you're joking," she says.

"Of course, I ain't!" I grins, sitting on the side of her desk. "Nate just got a flash from King George's home town offering us thirty-five thousand dollars and


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 traveling expenses for three scuffles with three set-ups over there. Ain't we got fun?"

I think she'll be tickled silly, but, in the contrary, she seems exceedingly peeved.

"Gale, how much of your ring earnings have you saved?" she asks, like it's a serious matter.

Well, that's a horse of a different tint. I reach in the inside pocket of my coat and bring forth my bank book—one of the most interesting novels I have yet run across in my studies.

"I only got twenty thousand, eighty-six dollars and nineteen cents," I says. "Nothing at all, Judy."

"Nothing at all?" she says, sitting up straight. "Why, that's a whole lot of money! When you were a soda clerk for Ajariah Stubbs at twelve dollars a week, Gale, you would have thought it wealth beyond your wildest dreams. Now, it's nothing at all! Why"

"But listen, Judy," I interrupt, "I'm going to turn in this dinkey little tin-can-on-a-roller-skate I got and get a Pelham twin-six Sedan. That's going to hit me for about twelve thousand berries. But wait till you see it, Judy; I bet you'll get as big a kick out of riding in it as I will. Why, the front seat alone on one of these boats would hold the United States Senate without no trouble at all!"

"Indeed!" says Judy, kind of cold. "Well, I'll never ride in it, that's certain!"

"What have I done now, Judy?" I says, in astonishment. "Has anybody put in a rap for me, or what is the reasons you won't ride in my sedan?"


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 "Because," says Judy firmly, "I refuse to be a party to your spending any such absurd sum as twelve thousand dollars for an automobile—or—or anything! Why, that's all a millionaire would spend for a car. You've only just bought the one you have now. What's the matter with it?"

I am commencing to feel the bit red in the face. "Well—I—they ain't enough class to it, Judy," I says. "I am getting in the public's eye more and more every day now and a fellow in my position has got to put on a little dog!"

I see Judy's thrilling lips quivering and then a smile, which makes my blood tingle and would yours too, opens 'em wide. She lays her hand on my arm and I tremble, like I always do when she touches me.

"Oh, Gale—you foolish boy!" she says softly. "When are you going to grow up? So you think yourself famous, because you've had some little success as a prize fighter? That sort of recognition doesn't mean anything, Gale. Don't you know there is a vast difference between fame and notoriety? Where are the high ideals and the stanch ambition that took you from behind a soda fountain? Are you going to disappoint me and let this passing prosperity blind you to the big things that still lie before you? Give up prize fighting now—as you promised yourself you would when you had made enough money to live on while looking about for your life work. You have twenty thousand dollars—why, there are twenty thousand things you can do! A smail business of some kind, perhaps, or—but that will work itself out, if"


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 "Judy, twenty thousand's nothing startling these days, honest it ain't!" I butt in. "But with the thirty-five grand I'll get from these fights in London I'll have a real bank roll and then I'll hang my gloves on the wall for good, no fooling, Judy! Why, think how that trip across will broaden my mind and—eh—and all that business."

"You're evading the issue, Gale," says Judy, shaking her pretty head. "You don't want to give up boxing! You—you're actually proud of your profession. I can read that in everything you say and do! You do like to fight, don't you?"

With that she gets up from the desk and walks over to the window, looking out on Drew City and tapping her lead pencil on the pane. I get up, too, and stand beside her.

"Judy," I says, picking my words carefully, because I don't want to get in wrong with this eye-widener by no means—"Judy, I do get a kick out of box fighting, but not in the way you think. Of course they's a thrill in a hard-won battle, the roar of the mob, the plunk of your glove against body or jaw, and the fact that boxing is a man-to-man affair, not team against team, like baseball, football, basketball, and them other sports. That's the main thing which makes prize fighting so popular—it's a two-man struggle, and while you watch it you can put yourself in the place of either! You don't get that kind of a angle in watching two teams. But the big thrill I get out of being a leather pusher is the fact that it's the only thing to date at which I have meant something. Judy, I'm getting somewheres


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 as a boxer, I'm a success at it, what I mean—and you can't laugh that off!"

"Any husky longshoreman could be the same!" she sniffs.

"Don't you believe it, Judy. There's thousands of huskies in the game, but there's only eight champions!" I tell her.

"Oh, I don't want to argue with you, Gale," says Judy, kind of impatient. "If you've made up your mind to remain a prize fighter, I don't suppose anything I might say would change you."

"But I ain't made up my mind to remain a prize fighter," I says. "Not by a long shot! I have simply made up my mind to stay in this game till I'm a champ. At everything else I've tried my hand at since I been eight years old I been nothing more than a number on a pay roll, holding a meaningless job. I didn't amount to nothing, Judy, and I'd just as soon be dead as be that way! My motto is: 'Stand out from the mob at—anything! Do your stuff! Don't just live and die like a blade of grass—stepped on by everything from laborers to millionaires, ugly by itself, useless except in mass formation and only useful then as fodder!' They's millions of fellows like that, Judy, but I ain't one of 'em!"

"Those are admirable precepts," says Judy, coming back to her desk again. "But what has that to do with your remaining a boxer?"

"Just this," I says. "Like I told you, Judy, before I begin scrapping, I was George W. Nothing. Well, it's different now! Why, even in Europe they've heard


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 of me—look at that offer from London. I got a following, I get big money for my services, and the sport writers rate me among the leading fighters in the game. If I was to step down before I've win the light heavyweight championship of the world, I'd feel I hadn't played my hand out. It would slow me up in anything I tried after leaving the ring, Judy, it would for a fact! This is the first chance I've had to get to the top in anything. Let me go through with it and if I do win the title I'll quit the ring and tackle some other game with a bigger future. Having been a champ at one trade will help me a hundred per cent to be a champ at another!'

"Well, maybe you're right, Gale," says Judy after a minute, which I use in thinking how long will I have to wait and what will I have to do to get her. "But I don't quite agree with the reasoning that makes your fighting a necessity to your future success. However, good luck to you, and I'll continue to help you in any way Ican. What books have you been reading lately?"

Glad to change the subject, I tell her, and after trying me out on what I've already waded through she lays out my reading course for the coming week. Before I leave, I tell her the $12,000 Pelham sedan is out, as far asl amconcerned. Judy was right, there's no two ways about it. What a sapolio I'd of been to pay that much jack for a car which I needed the same way I needed another forehead. Like she said, the money was commencing to go to my head—where I suppose there was the most room!

While Nate was trying to make up our minds about


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 this trip to London, we got a letter from Denver Nolan, the biggest fight promoter in captivity, which had just built a new arena in New York. Nolan wants to put me on with Jimmy Hanley, light heavyweight champion of America, for his opening attraction, figuring that bout will jam his club to the doors. The English flash, Gunner Slade, light heavyweight champion of the world, had agreed to risk his title in a quarrel with the winner. As there's sure to be plenty pennies in it for us, why, Nolan's proposition puts off the ocean voyage. This tickles Judy silly and I didn't feel near as disappointed that I ain't going across as I thought I'd be. I don't care what they got in Europe, they ain't got no Judy Willcox and what else "is" they?

For the next week, running back and forth to New York fixing things up with Denver Nolan keeps Nate busy. I'm busy too—studying my books, doping out schemes which will get me and Nate's other scrappers free publicity on the sporting pages, and working out lightly a couple of hours the day with Knockout Kelly and Two-Punch Jackson.

Well, when I stepped in and gummed up Rags Dempster's plans by hiring Judy for our office, Rags gees up in flames and blows his father's office to enter Princeton, with all the rest of the rich bunch from the swell prep school. A few weeks later he busts into the limelight by graduating from college while still a freshman, no small feat. His folks is in Europe and Rags had been stepping high, wide, and handsome since they left, bounding around with a mob of fast guys like himself, which if they had a cent apiece would


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 have much more money than brains. They was having a wild party in a roadhouse just outside of Drew City one night, with bootleg flowing like Niagara Falls, when along comes the revenue babies. They pinched the roadhouse, taking everybody's name, and on the mad dash home, Rags, which must have been lit up like a Christmas tree, crashes into a fence with his car. One of the girls gets a broken arm and one of the fellows gets so badly bunged up he's got to be carted to the hospital. Well, it all got in the papers on the account of everybody in the party coming from big families and it was the town scandal for many's the day. The minute it gets to teacher's ears at Princeton, why, Princeton gives Rags and his playmates the air. In a few days Rags is back in his father's office again and he seems to be proud of all the stuff which was in the papers about him. But they's plenty people says when they pass him on the street, sneering and stuck up as usual: "Wait till his father comes back from Europe and it'll be different!"

I can't figure this fellow Dempster, and that's a fact. Imagine doing anything to risk a college education! I would of parted with a leg for the opportunities this dizzy dumbell tossed airily away. A rich father, a bright future, swell friends, college, autos—everything. All that I've been breaking my neck to get ever since I been old enough to know what it's all about, this bird has presented to him in the cradle, and he let it slide!

Well, Nate finally gets Denver Nolan to talk turkey with the regards to my salary for a quarrel with Jimmy Hanley, and the battle is carded for the middle of the


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 following month. For some reason, Hanley has me pegged as a set-up and he thinks ten minutes is ample time for him to get in shape to flatten me. We are scheduled to go fifteen frames to a decision and I seen in one paper where Hanley says he don't expect the fight to go over a couple of rounds. It turns out he's a burn guesser. It didn't go that long!

Hanley is guaranteed $40,000. Being the cheaper help, I got to be satisfied with a scant twelve thousand and the only guarantee I got is one from Hanley's manager that his champ will smack me for a Turkish waffle iron. That's applesauce to me, because I have saw this Jimmy Hanley work, and, champ or no champ, he looks like he was made to order for me. And twelve thousand kronen for making him like it—oo, la, la!

Well, a short time before this setto, Spence Brock drops into the gym one afternoon and says he'll come over to Mrs. Willcox's boarding house that night and pick me up, because his father is going to have some friends from New York over to their place which is interested in me and he'd like to have 'em meet me. So after supper I get into my new Tuxedo which I pay $100 for at the New York store and go over. If I had of been Vincent Astor or Babe Ruth, I couldn't of been treated no nicer by one and all.

Besides Mr. Brock, they's four or five other dignified-looking old guys sitting out on the big glass-covered pazazza in nobby Tuxedos the same as me, smoking and drinking—well, what they are drinking is nobody's business. Anyways, me and Spence takes


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 grapejuice when the house boy pitty-pats around for our order. I get introduced to everybody and they all shake hands and when Spence whispers to me that they's about fifty million bucks represented by these four or five men, why, I get quite the thrill. I pay strict attention to everything they say and do, so's when I get to be a millionaire I will at least know how to carry it off.

But if I'm getting a kick out of sitting around with all these money kings, why, they seem to be getting a kick out of me, too! Which strikes me as being kind of comical, because I'm Mr. Nothing himself right then. But Spence tells me they're all fight fans like his father and it is as much of a treat to them to be on familiar terms with the coming champion as it is for me to be there, if not more so. A bank president offering a heavy loan would get no more attention from 'em than I'm getting, says Spence, and he calls my attention to how his father is bragging about how long he's knew me and the etc. These birds is under a heavy strain during their business hours, Spence tells me, and this is so much pure fun for 'em—does 'em good, he says, to relax and talk about something else besides stocks and bonds. All rich men has hobbies, he adds, and I have become his father's hobby.

I suppose another thing which give me some standing with Mr. Brock's pals was the fact that I am there in a tux the same as they are and didn't show up in no cap and sweater and bust somebody in the nose just to be nasty, like maybe they figured a prize fighter would do. Mr. Brock draws me out on how I'm com-


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 I thought I had him, and my disappointment was great; but I did not despair of catching my gentleman. Some time afterwards I learnt that he was to be at the Café Hardi, in the Boulevard des Italiens. I went thither with some of my agents, and when he arrived all was so well arranged, that he had only to get into a hackney-coach, of which I paid the fare. Led before a commissary of police, he asserted that he was not Winter; but, despite the insignia of the rank he had conferred on himself, and the long string of orders hanging on his breast, he was properly and officially identified as the individual mentioned in the warrant which I had for his apprehension.

Winter was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, and would now be at liberty but for a forgery which he committed while at Bicêtre, which, bringing on him a fresh sentence of eight years at the galleys, he was conducted to the Bagne at the expiration of his original sentence, and is there at present.

This adventurer does not want wit: he is, I am told, the author of a vast many songs, much in fashion with the galley-slaves, who consider him as their Anacreon. I append one of his productions:—


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 ing along with my studies and he asks me questions about different subjects and different books he knows I been reading. Every time I answer him I catch his friends glancing from one to the other kind of surprised, and you ought to see Mr. Brock throw out his chest and beam around at 'em as much as to say: "This boy's the trout's ankles, hey?"

Well, finally I look at my watch and it's nine o'clock, and as Nate insists on early to bed and early to rise when I'm training for a bout, why, I get up and wish everybody good night. They all stand up and shake hands with me, saying they are glad to of met me and they will see me again when I fight Jimmy Hanley. They're going to have ringside boxes and they hope I win. So I says I hope so myself, as far as that goes. So that was all settled.

That interview give me quite a kick! And why wouldn't it give me a kick to know a man like Mr. Brock was for me? Don't get the idea in your head that I had any plans to quit trying or ease up on the pace I'd set for myself because I had a millionaire for a ace in the hole. The only support I wanted from Mr. Brock, or even from Judy, was their encouragement and attention to my efforts to be a success. I supplied the rest of the ingredients, all by myself!

Spence walks home with me from his house that night, and on the ways he wants to know if I can bust away from my training for one afternoon the following week to see the Brooklyn Handicap run out on Long Island. The pet of his father's racing stable, "Knight Errant" was entered in it, and Spence claimed


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 the big race would be a spread for this horse, which only a few days before had broke the track record in a private workout.

"If you have a couple of thousand lying around loose—as you must have, with the purses you've been getting for your fights lately, you bloated plutocrat, here's a chance to make a lot of quick, easy money!" Spence wound up, "Father thinks Knight Errant will be five to one, at least, and he'll win as sure as fate, or else"

"Or else he won't!" I butt in, grinning. "I don't know a thing about racing, Spence, and all I know about horses is that they eat a wicked oat. As for GAMBLING on 'em, well"

"Who said anything about gambling?" Spence interrupts. "A bet on Knight Errant to win the Brooklyn is no gamble, Gale, it's a copper-riveted cinch! But suit yourself, of course. Far be it from me to lead you astray. I'm going to bet a thousand on Knight Errant myself and he'll go to the post carrying all of dad's money that the books will take. He gets in with an impost of only a hundred and ten pounds—a feather for him, Gale—and the best jockey in the East, Donovan, will have the leg up. Why, he'll win by himself! At any rate, try and get away to see the handicap, even if you don't bet a penny. The crowd, the excitement, and the soul-tingling thrill of a blanket finish will give you an awful kick!"

It did give me an awful kick and no mistake!

I lay awake a oversize hour that night, thinking about Spence telling me that Knight Errant will be


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 unable to lose the Brooklyn Handicap at big odds. I had never been much of a gambler, mostly because until very lately I never had no spare jack to devote to this worthy purpose and didn't believe in luck. Still and all, I couldn't imagine Mr. Brock being wrong about anything, and if he's sure his horse will win—and at ''five to one! . . .''

I simply couldn't get to sleep and that's all there was to it! I remembered reading somewheres that if you will merely close your eyes and begin counting imaginery sheep jumping over imaginery fences you will slip right off to dreamland. So I began counting, but I didn't count no sheep! What I am counting is dollars, like, should I bet a thousand on Knight Errant I would win five thousand and should I bet five thousand I would win twenty-five thousand and should I bet ten thousand I would win fifty thousand—and—well, the last I remembered before dropping off to slumber I am a trifle over a hundred thousand winner!

The next morning I nail Nate at breakfast.

"What d'ye think of Knight Errant in the Brooklyn Handicap?" I ask him, trying to be kind of careless about it.

"Hey, listen," says Nate. "Lay off the bang-tails, kid; they have kept me poor and broke wiser guys than either of us!"

"Applesauce!" I says. "I asked you a question—what d'ye think of Knight Errant?"

"He won't be in the money!" sneers Nate. At beagle's a sprinter, and a mile and a eighth's too much race for him. Cirrus will win 'at scramble from here


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 to Brazil. He couldn't lose if he left his legs in the paddock!"

"But would they let him do that?" I says, with a sarcastical grin, and Knockout Kelly laughs.

"Both you guys is comical to me," says Kayo. "Knight Errant and Cirrus, hey? Blah! A couple of Airedales! Mad Hatter's my feed-box special. He'll tincan in! I'm parlayin' that bet right back on Postmaster to cop the last race. If they both come through, which they naturally will, I win forty-five hundred on the day! That's tough, hey?"

I leave 'em, still arguing, because that remark of Kayo's about parlaying his bet gives me a wonderful idea. Like a flash, I see a chance to quit the ring immediately after my fight with Jimmy Hanley, with a bank roll which would startle Vanderbilt. Then I can pick out a business of my own and maybe Judy will come in as a partner, and not only in the business either! I can't get to the bank quick enough.

Without saying a word to nobody—but the paying teller—I draw out all of my $20,086.19 but the eighty-six nineteen. Then I got down to Kale Yackley's cigar store and poolroom. Kale takes bets on the races, ball games, fights, and the like and sends 'em over to a big bookmaker in New York. He gets a heavy play from the men which works in the carpet factory and a couple other big plants. I ask Kale will he take a bet on Knight Errant to win the Brooklyn handicap.

"That's what I'm here for," smiles Kale. "How much?"

"Twenty thousand dollars," I says, calmly pulling


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 out a package of brand-new thousand-dollar bills. "And I want it all parlayed back on me to knock out Jimmy Hanley!"

Kale's face was a movie as he gazes at the money, his eyes popping out so far you could of knocked 'em off with a can. But that don't bother me, I figure if I'm going to gamble at all, why, I might as well plunge like a man—take a chance of winning all or losing all, like Cæsar, Napoleon, and them other Big Leaguers done. They's no kick in risking anything less!

When Kale gets where he can talk, he stutters that he'll have to call up "Big Bill" Jacobs, the bookmaker in New York, and see if he'll take a bet as heavy and as cuckoo as mine. After a while he comes back, muttering and shaking his head. But he takes my jack and gives me a ticket calling for $20,000 on Knight Errant to win, at closing prices, and if the horse wins the entire loot is to go back on me, at prevailing odds, to knock out Hanley. "A sucker bet!" remarks Kale, handing me the ticket. I paid no attention. I am thinking if Knight Errant wins at five to one I'll go into the ring with Jimmy Hanley carrying a hundred thousand dollars of my own money that I'll knock him out! My whole future's at stake, yet I might say I was as cool as a cucumber—if I wanted to be a liar. Later, I told Spence what I done and Spence says good for me, but I notice his eyes looks worried.

Well, I go over to our office after making the bet with half a mind to tell Judy. Going up the stairs, I suddenly remember that she's away, having took her mother over to New York to see a big eye doctor.


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 I'm coming down again, when who do I bump into at the first landing but Rags Dempster. I would of passed him without a word, but he grabs my arm and hangs onto me like he's drowning.

"For God's sake, Galen, give me ten minutes of your time!" he pants. "I'm in a terrible fix!"

I look at him in amazement. He seems to me like he's two inches from the hystericals and if I didn't know prohibition was in our midst I would swear he's been drinking heavily—a favorite drink of his any more. I'm so surprised at the shape he's in, wild-eyed and trembling, that I don't stop to think of what a terrible nerve he's got coming for help when he's in a jam to the fellow he's fouled a million times. Still and all, if he's really in trouble I can't turn him down cold without a hearing. I wouldn't want nobody to do that to me. So I told him to come on upstairs to the office.

A half hour later Rags is sitting at Judy's desk with his head buried in his arms—crying like a baby. I'm walking up and down the floor in a trance, but even in the trance I notice that Rags is sitting in Judy's chair and I stop walking long enough to make him get up and sit somewheres else. My mind's in a whirl, it is for a fact, because Rags has just told me he's stole ten thousand bucks from his father's office and dropped every nickel of it at roulette in a New York gambling house.

Sweet Mamma, what a trap he's in! I suppose after what he's done to me I should of been tickled silly that he's up against it proper, but I ain't particularly pleased,


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 at that. I can't see many giggles in anybody getting the worst of it, can you?

But the thrilling part of Rags's story is the fact that his father will be back from Europe the following day and they don't seem to be no way out for Rags at all. First his father will hear about him being throwed out of college and the reasons why, and on top of that will come the knowledge that his son is a crook. Between moans, Rags tells me his father is what you call a hard man and not only will he cut off a finger nail, but they's more than a even chance that he'll send him to jail for good measure!

Well, they's something pitiful in seeing a man weep—and something disgusting, too. So I slap Rags on the heaving shoulders and tell him to snap out of it and I'll help him. After all, I think, this bird has been going down steadily while I been going up. Maybe the breaks has been against him.

Then, again, I figure to have a fortune when Knight Errant wins the handicap and I smack Jimmy Hanley silly, and it looks like I have drew away from Rags in the race for Judy, too. All together, I seem to be sitting pretty and I remember in the Bible which Mrs. Willcox gives me it says: "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; if he be thirsty, give him water to drink!" So I finally pull Rags together and send him away with my word that I'll loan him the jack to make his shortage good.

As I have bet every dime I got in the world on Knight Errant, why, getting together them ten thousand bucks for Rags is something of a trick and don't think


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 it ain't! I didn't know nobody I would ask for that much dough, even if I needed it for myself. Still, I got it! It was a case of where they's a will, they's ten thousand dollars."

After a two-day tongue battle with Denver Nolan, got him to advance me ten thousand and I agree to call my twelve thousand guarantee for the Jimmy Hanley fight square. I lose two thousand bucks by playing Lady Bountiful for Rags, but I think what will a mere two thousand mean to me after I win my bet? Anyways, I give Rags the money and my word of honor that I won't tell nobody nothing about it.

When the day of the Brooklyn Handicap rolls around I drive over early to the Aqueduct track with Judy in my chumpy roadster. There was no more people there than there is in South Dakota and getting seats in the grand stand was a considerable feat, but we got 'em. There's three races before the big handicap, but they don't mean nothing to me, though I holler my head off with the rest, at a neck-and-neck finish in the steeplechase.

The excitement seems to hit Judy too, and she's having the time of her life! With her cheeks flushed a rosy red and her beautiful eyes sparkling like sapphires in a ring, she's a sight there ain't nobody forgetting overnight. She gets a third look from everybody and maybe I don't feel proud to be with her when them necks twists around after us!

Well, nothing will do but she has got to bet on a horse and when I says wait till the Brooklyn Handicap is over and I'll bet with her, she laughs and says I


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 have been talking about nothing but that race since morning and anybody would think I had a fortune bet on it. Sweet Grandpa, if she only knew what I did have at stake! I ain't told her a word about it, I want to surprise her after the race—and that's what I done.

However, she closes her eyes and sticks her hatpin through the program for the third race. The pin goes through the name of a horse entitled Babbling Brook, and Judy sends me down to the betting ring with two bucks to lay on that baby for her! When I commence to tell her what a foolish way that is to gamble when she don't know nothing about the horse and just picked it blind, she starts to get sore, so I go down and bet her two dollars on Babbling Brook. I got my mind made up that when this goat runs last I will give her back her money and tell her I was too late to get it down.

Babbling Brook win by two lengths at twenty-five to one!

The next race is the Brooklyn, and by the time them horses is on their ways to the post I'm in terrible shape. The mob rushes to the rail and banks twenty deep against it—the buzzing, rumbling roar of their excited voices coming up to me in the grand stand just like it comes over the ropes to me in the ring.

I am trembling like a leaf and though I sink my teeth in my lower lip that don't seem to stop it. I borrow a pair of opera glasses from a cold-faced hardeyed guy next to me and I manage to pick out Knight Errant from the eleven prancing horses leaving the paddock. Mr. Brook's entry looks like a million dollars, tossing its shinny black head, rarin' to go!


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 I can't sit down, and, for that matter, everybody seems to be standing on their seats, all chattering and laughing kind of nervous and elbowing each other this way and that. I hear a dozen horses' names. "Mad Hatter's a good thing!" . . . "Cirrus will win in a walk!" . . . "Boniface is a cinch at the weights!" . . . "Watch Knight Errant!" . . . Then, thirty thousand voices in one terrible roar which rolls across the field and echoes back: "They're off!"

I don't want no more twenty-thousand-dollar bets on no horse races when twenty thousand is all I got to my name. I put on ten years in the two minutes it took 'em to run that handicap! The big crowd has went cuckoo, howling and screaming like thirty thousand maniacs:. . . "Come on with Mad Hatter, come on with him, Jock!" "Use your whip, you dumbell!" "Boniface, Boniface, Boniface!" "Cirrus all the way!" "Knight Errant walks in!" "Aaaaah, look at the favorite run!"

I get swept off my perch, and the next thing I know I am half-ways down the steps to the field, pulled along by the yelling lunatics. Battling my way, I get to the fence, minus my hat, some buttons off my coat and the flap of a pocket. I hear 'em thundering into the stretch and then I see 'em bunched together on the far rail, a flying, bobbing mass of color. All of a sudden I let out a wild yell of joy. Out in front the jockey's arm rising and falling with the whip like he's beating a drum, is Knight Errant! I know Mr. Brock's color's; red cap, blue jacket with red bars. Knight Errant closed at three to one, not the five to


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 one I expected, but sixty thousand for me if he wins! If he loses. ..

But you seen it in the papers. Knight Errant stumbled fifty yards from the finish, recovered too late, and run—fifth!

The jam at the rail breaks up quick. Lots of fellows is yelling with joy and running up to cash in their tickets as the numbers goes up, 6-3-1-Cirrus, Boniface, Mad Hatter. Others, like me, just stands there in a trance. It kind of slowly begins to get through my num head that I am clean—I ain't got a nickel in the wide, wide world. And as for Judy—miles away, hundreds of miles!

Then I think to myself: "Well, you big stiff, what are you going to do, bust out crying? Snap out of it! You couldn't get that twenty thousand back if you sobbed your eyes out— you can't get nothing if you're going to moan about it. Forget it, and start the ball rolling for another bank roll. It's all fun!"

I'm plowing my ways through the crowd back to Judy, a little bit older, but at least with my head up, when I bump smack into the last guy in the world I expect to see at a race track just then—Rags. He's tearing up some tickets and cursing Mr. Brock and Knight Errant, over and over again. Well, it kind of dumfounds me that Rags would be able to make a bet on anything when he's in a jam like he is now, so I ask him about it. He seems a bit startled to see me, peering at me out of a set of bloodshot eyes which has booze printed on 'em in raised letters.


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 "Is it any of your affair what I do?" he snarls, glaring at me.

"Well, no—I guess it ain't, Rags," I says. "Only I'd think a fellow which is in the trouble you are"

He busts out laughing at the top of his voice and I stop in the greatest of surprise.

"What's the joke?" I says.

Rag's lip curls at me in one of them sneers which would make a rabbit aggressive.

"You're the joke, my poor fool!" he says. "I'm not in any trouble—I never stole anything! I saw a chance for a clean-up on that infernal nag of Brock's, Knight Errant, if I had a respectable amount of money to bet. So I concocted that embezzlement story for your sole benefit and you fell for it beautifully, you boob! Ten thousand dollars for the mere asking, though you must admit I put on some artistic touches. Well, you owe me something for coming between me and Judy Willcox. As for the ten thousand—try and get it, that's all! You have nothing to show that I owe you a penny, and I have your word of honor that you'll never tell!"

Well, I just stand there and stare into his grinning face. I'm afraid to touch him, honest I am, because I know I would never be satisfied with just beating him up! I'd bump him off as sure as my name's Gale Galen, and I didn't want to go to the chair. But somebody pushes in between us and grabs Rags's arm. It's Nate Shapiro and his face is as white as white itself.

"You double-crossin', yellah hound!" he bawls at


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 Rags. "You bet he's got somethin' to show 'at you owe him 'at jack—he's got me! I heard every word you said, d'ye get that, you crook? I know Gale—he'll never cuff you, but it's different here! You're laughin', hey? Well, laugh this off!"

With that he knocks Rags fat on his shoulder blades, and then ducks through the crowd which comes running up. I continue on up to the grand stand and Judy.

I guess she knows something is wrong the minute she sees me, though I try to act natural.

"Gale, what's the matter?" she says que, "Did you lose on that race?"

I nod my head, it's buzzing like a bee-hive.

"How much?" she wants to know, pulling me around till I face her.

"Oh, just a few dollars," I says, with a synthetic grin.

I should of knew by this time that I can't fool Judy. In a few minutes she draws the entire box score from me, with the slight exception of what Rags has did. I see by her pale face that it's a terrible blow to her to hear I have lost my last dime on this horse race. But instead of bawling me out, a thing I confidently expect, why, she is just full of sympathy, squeezing my arm and telling me never mind I'll soon have it all back and more. Coming at a time when I never needed it worse, her sweetness is more than a tonic and does wonders for my peace of mind. Ain't she a knockout, no fooling?

I sit there just looking at her and I find the view a


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 thrilling one indeed. I'm doing a piece of heavy thinking—thinking what I could do if she'd always be with me, when I hear her saying that I don't have to start penniless, I'll at least have the twelve thousand I'm going to get for my fight with Jimmy Hanley for the light heavyweight title.

Before I get a chance to stall on this subject, along comes Nate, still steamed up about Rags. His first remark, though, is that he win five thousand even on Cirrus, and that Kayo Kelly dropped one thousand on Mad Hatter and is fit to be tied. Then he turns to Judy.

"Did Gale tell you what that—what Rags Dempster done to him?" he demands.

Judy's eyes widens and she says no. I try to shut Nate up, but he tells Judy how Rags took me for that ten thousand bucks and made me like it. Well, she goes right up in flames and says she will go to Rags's father and tell him the whole business and make him pay me. Honest, I never see her so hopping mad before in all my life! But I make her promise to lay off. What good would it do to tell Rags's old man. I got no proof and who's word would his father take? To tell you the truth, I'm more interested in the fact that Judy thinks enough of me to want to go to the bat for me than I am in the ten thousand or ten million!

Well, three days later I fight Jimmy Hanley and you know what happened. I never went into a battle more determined to win and win quick! Before the bell rings for the first frame, I got everything to set in my mind. If I lose this scrap, I got to start at the


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 bottom and begin all over again, broke. The five thousand and up purses will be a thing of the past till I can fight my ways to another chance at the title. If I win it, why, I'm a champion and I can write my own ticket for the amounts I get to display my wares. I can even go to Europe and get a crack at Gunner Slade, world's champion light heavy. Yet, I got to win and win quick!

As I had gave Rags Dempster the money I was to get for this scuffle, I am really fighting Hanley for nothing, but I find that more of a help than anything else. Hanley come out smiling at the bell, nodding to friends at the close-packed ringside. He blocks my straight left and counters with a light jab to my mouth, I shake my head and bore in to close quarters and both of us land hard rights and lefts to the body, while the crowd settles back to look at a long, tough fight.

The next second they are all on their feet, triple cuckoo! As we come out of a clinch, we both start a right swing for the other's jaw. I beat Hanley to the punch, connecting solidly, and he went down on his haunches like somebody tripped him. The house is in a uproar as the referee begins the counting and one look at Hanley's goofy, how-did-this-happen grin is enough for me! I know how to work when he gets up—if he does.

He did. He's on his feet at "eight" and the customers howl for me to finish him. I gives him plenty chance to stand erect and then I measure him with a light left and sock my right to his heart. He falls over


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 on me and hangs there for his life, gasping for breath.

The referee finally tears him away and Hanley surprises me with a wild left hook to the head which sends me back against the ropes and gives his friends a chance to yell. But that's just a dying flurry. Hanley never got over that first punch which floored him, and I know it's only a question now of a opening! I don't want to cut him up by playing safe and wearing him down, as some guys would of done. I want to slip him a clean knockout—quick, painless, and a proper way for a champ to lose. The way I wanted to get it myself when my time came.

The opening comes thirty seconds before the bell and just when Hanley seems to be finding himself and getting stronger. I am covered up and letting him drive me across the ring with a shower of lefts and rights, most of which is bouncing off my bent elbows, but some of which gets through. The ones which did connect was not doing me no good and that's a fact! Hanley was a mean puncher, but that knockdown has ruined his timing and generalship. He's snarling at me to open up and fight when I suddenly hook my left to his wind with everything I got behind it.

Hanley grunts, looks worried and backs away, while advice pours from his corner like water over a dam! I follow him slowly to the ropes, stabbing my left in his face to keep him from setting for a punch. A quick feint for his body draws down his guard, and I throw a right at his head which buckles his shaky knees and brings the bawling mob to its feet again. Dizzy and all at sea, Hanley swings a vicious left, and


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 I step in under it, crossing my right flush to his jaw. This punch should of knocked him cold. It did!

I am light heavyweight champion of America, but I ain't got a dime to my name.

Mr. Brock and Spence is the first ones to greet me when I climb down under the ropes after my one-round win. Mr. Brock grabs my glove and pumps my hand up and down till my arm's sore. Then he tells me Spence has wised him up to what happened to me when Knight Errant stumbled in the stretch. He claims he feels more or less responsible for me going to the cleaners, as his son laid me on the horse, and he wants to make good my twenty thousand out of his own pocket. As if I'd let him!

"But, you poor devil—" begins Mr. Brock, when I says no.

"I ain't no poor devil, Mister Brock, don't call me that!" I says, quietly. "I hate that expression! I don't want to be cried over. I'm young and healthy and I got some valuable experience now that I didn't have before. In a way, I'm glad I lost that money. It's cured me forever of gambling, that's a cinch! If I'd of won that bet, I might be hanging around the race tracks till I lost my ambition and a few other things which is more than money. I'll start right in again to-morrow doing my stuff, and"

"But you haven't a penny!" interrupts Mr. Brock impatiently. "You are just where you started!"

"Oh, no,'m not just where I started, Mister Brock," I grins, throwing out my chest. "You forget—I'm a champion!"


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a champion at anything is a wonderful sensation, but it goes to your head like bootleg. Success has knocked as many fellows cold as failure ever did, what I mean, because you get careless when you get to the top, and you take chances you would never of thought of when you was just one of the mob. You get to thinking you're unvincible, and a guy which figures himself bombproof in any game gives old man Destiny the hystericals! Leading the pack in a race where they's only room for one in front is a exceedingly ticklish position. They's always somebody else coming up with a rush just the way you did, and the fatal mistake of holding that baby too cheaply usually accounts for the fall of the mighty, in the prize ring or in anything else!

After my win over Jimmy Hanley, I passed through the dangerous stage which all winners has got to pass through sooner or later. Some comes out of it champs and some comes out of it tramps. I come out still a champion, but Judy was responsible for that. Gee, what a sap I made out of myself for a while! They's no telling what cuckoo stunts I might of did or where I'd of wound up if Judy hadn't snapped me out of it in


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 time. But still, as she said, the experience I had was necessary to bring me back to earth. The important money I had been taking in, the kick of seeing my name all over the sporting pages, getting offers from movie companies, having people turn to look after me on the street and acting proud to shake my hand—all that coming almost overnight, you might say, was a bit too much for me! I got no chanccechance [sic] to get used to it.

But just as losing every nickel I had on the first horse race I ever bet on in my life cured me of gambling, so did my first bout with Battling Whisky turn me forever from the cup that queers. I at least had brains enough to realize in time that in both drinking and gambling I was putting in far more than I could ever hope to take out—risking my self-respect, Judy, and my future against this thing they call luck and a drink of whisky!

This particular adventure of mine liked to cost me my brand new title. Judy says it was worth it and I got off cheap. I don't know—here's the dope, what do you think?

As I mentioned before, Gunner Slade, light-heavyweight champ of the civilized world, had promised me a fight if I beat Jimmy Hanley. But it was different after the Gunner sees by the cables that I flatten James with a few punches. That one-frame win makes Mr. Slade very thoughtful indeed and he demands a hundred thousand fish—win, lose, or draw—for risking his championship in a scuffle with me. He might as well of asked for the Eyetalian throne! The fight promoters on both sides of the bounding main just giggle


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 at him, and he goes on about his business, beating up them foreign set-ups and perfectly satisfied with everything.

But I ain't satisfied! I want to win the world's championship, box a couple of times for plenty pennies and then step down from the ring—or up—to the business world. That means Judy and Judy means—everything.

So I reversed the usual custom for a champion by hurling challenges at the leading contenders in my division. The sport writers, which had always been nice to me, seems to get quite a kick out of this, and I was on the sporting pages every day as regular as the date line. I got lots of publicity, pleasing to the eye, but not so good as a food!

Well, the time goes on and I don't see no jack in sight. I'm doing about as much business as if I was selling sleighs in Los Angeles, and I'm plenty disgusted. I'm sitting in our office one day talking things over with Judy, when a thought smacks me right in the face. I could of kick myself for not thinking of it before! The purses which the New York promoters was offering me for fights thrills me about as much as it thrills a aviator to go up in a elevator, but this scheme I have suddenly hit on looks like a wow!

In the land of Columbus, Ohio, there was a light heavyweight which from the newspaper reports must be using buzz saws for sparring partners and concrete silos for punching bags. His name in round numbers was Kid Christopher, and he's so tough he rips his clothes to shreds just putting 'em on. Out in far-off


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 Columbus they thought Kid Christopher was the parrot's beak and a better man than I'll ever be. Yet I'm champion in his class and he's failed to challenge me for a quarrel. All right, I'll challenge him!

"Judy," I says, "write a letter to Kid Christopher's manager asking him how much wages he wants for his visible means of support to fight me for the light-heavyweight title."

She raises her beautiful eyebrows in surprise. "But the highest bid from the New York promoters was forty thousand dollars—thirty for you and ten for Christopher," says Judy. "And Christopher has refused that amount. I have the correspondence all here, and"

She starts for the files, but I stop her. "Never mind the letters, Judy," I says. "And never mind the New York promoters. I'm going to promote this fight myself!"

Judy looks at me with these eyes which has been goaling the boys since she's been seven years old.

"What do you mean, Gale?" she asks, plenty interested.

"I'll tell you, Judy," I says. "I been thinking matters over, and I have reached the conclusion that I can use a million the same as a fight promoter can! I got just as much brains and twice the ambition as any of them birds, get me? Why should I go in there and get my head beat off for ten or twenty thousand bucks so's some wise guy promoter can draw down a hundred thousand for himself? Why shouldn't the fighter get the big money for doing his stuff? Who draws the


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 crowd? Who does the fighting? The scrapper! Who gets the money? The promoter! Well, I don't need no promoters. I'll stage my next battle myself and find out for good and all whether they is anything else I can do besides fight, or am I doomed to be a leather pusher for the rest of my natural life!"

By this time Judy is all excited and the skin I'd love to touch is flushed a rosy red.

"Of course, Gale, I'm delighted to know you want to try anything apart from prize fighting," she says. "And maybe if you are successful in promoting this fight, that will be an incentive to you to try promoting bigger things. Just how will you go about it?"

"Well," I says, "first I'll get together with Nate and figure out how much actual cash we'll have to put up for the rent of a arena, Kid Christopher's guarantee, the dough for the preliminary boys, and all that stuff. Then when I get the figures, why, I'll just go out and raise the jack. That's all they is to that!"

Judy smiles. "As easy as that?" she says, kind of doubtful. "I'm not trying to discourage you, Gale, but it seems to me all that will take a lot of money. Where will you get it?"

"Faint heart never won a bank roll!" I grins back at her. "I'll form a pool right here in Drew City among my friends, each one to put in so much, and, after the fight, take down profits according to their investment. They's Mister Brock, Spence, Lem Garfield, Ajariah Stubbs, Knockout Kelly, Nate, Kale Yackley, and plenty more which has got lavish umbrella money hid out for a rainy day. Of course, it's going


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 to take a lot of arguing and before I raise the first ten grand I'll probably be hoarse—but I'll get it and don't think I won't. I got my heart set on this, Judy, and what I set my heart on I generally get!"

I look right at her when I say that, and I ain't thinking of the money I got to raise either. And I guess neither was Judy, because that schoolgirl! complexion suddenly turns crimson and she monkeys with the notes on her typewriter desk for a minute.

"Well, Gale, it's certainly an ambitious effort, but I know you'll be equal to it!" she says finally, and shakes my hand. But she pulls hers away when I act like I never want to let go. "I wish you luck," she adds, "and if you don't let me help in some way, I'll—I'll be real angry!"

I stand as close to her as she'll let me and I'm tingling all over—fighting the idea of putting my arms around her, like I always had to fight that idea when I'm near her!

"Judy," I says, "you keep on being nice to me and you'll be helping a lot! That's all you got to do—just act as if—as if you liked me, even a little. Whenever I think you do—say, I feel they's nothing can stop me! I"

"Of course I like you, Gale," says Judy, calmly shutting me off, as usual. "Now go and start putting your plans into action while you're enthusiastic about them. That's always the best time!"

And she turns back to her typewriter. A polite "Here's your hat, what's your hurry?" Well, as the French says: "alpha beta gamma delta!"


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 The first snag I hit in my campaign to raise this sugar is no less than Mr. Nathan Shapiro. Before I get half-ways through telling Nate about my scheme to personally promote my clash with Christopher of Columbus, why, Nate throws up his hands and hollers that I'm cuckoo. He's all steamed up. They's a million reasons why I shouldn't think of such a thing, he says, yet when I pin him down he can only name one reason. That's that I ain't got no experience as a fight promoter.

"Nate," I says, "Noah never had no experience with boats, but he sailed a mean ark! Adam never had no experience at nothing and"

"And he got throwed out of the Garden of Eden on his ear!" butts in Nate. "You go boundin' around tryin' to raise any jack in this slab and 'at's what'll happen to us! These yokels is closer than a tie game. They wouldn't give a dime to see Niagara Falls run backward—can you picture 'em givin' you pennies to put into a box fight in New York? Be yourself!"

"I'll bet you five hundred bucks I raise the dough in a week," I says; "money talks!"

"Money may talk in some places," sneers Nate, "but you'll find it deaf and dumb here! I won't make no bet with you, though. You're too lucky for me, kid. Say—if you fell off a dock, you'd come up with a tube of radium in each hand!"

The next time I see Nate, why I ain't got no tube of radium in each hand, but I got enough money in eath hand to buy 'em!

My second interview is with Spence Brock. Spence


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 thinks my scheme is the gnat's elbow and nothing will do but he's got to run me up to his father with it. Mr. Brock listens to my sales talk, asks a few questions about one thing and the other, chews on his always unlit cigar for a minute, cocks a eye at me—and then starts the ball rolling with a check for twenty-five thousand dollars! Spence comes across with a thousand. When I got outside their house I capered around till should anybody of saw me they would of took it for granted I'm crazy—and I am crazy with joy!

Then I begin a house-to-house canvass among the people I know in Drew City. I put everything I got into my selling argument, changing it for almost every person I hit for a contribution, or rather for a investment, as I hope to pay interest which will make the First National Bank's 4 per cent look silly!

I play up to each one's weakness as I know it, show 'em figures on the gate receipts of some carefully selected championship fights, promise I won't take my share of the purse till everybody has got their dough back with a handsome profit, and wind up by showing 'em Mr. Brock's name at the head of the list for that twenty-five grand. They couldn't laugh that off and it generally sold 'em!

A twenty-minute talk lands Kale Yackley for a five-hundred-buck subscription. My next stop is Ajariah Stubbs. Time put in, one hour ten minutes; result, $2,500. I take Lem Garfield for five hundred; Red Fish has a thousand bucks' worth of faith in me; another grand comes easy from a pool at Nickmeyer's Garage, and that's the way it goes all along the line.


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 Even Judy and her mother insist on having a interest in the thing, and though I don't want them to gamble their money on me, why, they force me to take two hundred.

In three days I have collected a total of forty thousand iron men right in Drew City from people which was willing to back up their belief in me with the greatest proof of friendship they is in the world—money! Believe me, I felt my responsibility and I was proud of it. I couldn't of been such a flop or they'd never take a chance like that on nothing but my word, would they?

Well, when Nate comes back to our office from Buffalo with Knockout Kelly, where Kayo stopped Indian Brown in three rounds, and I tell him what I've done, why, he's speechless. But Nate's never speechless for long! After remarking that if he had my nerve he'd open a sailboat factory on the Sara Desert, he says he'll just toss in ten thousand of his own and Kayo will sweeten the pot with five more.

"Well—I—eh—I was goin' to get a car," begins Kayo.

"Blah!" says Nate. "What do you know about autos? I bet you think a chassey is lingerie! Put him down for five grand," he adds to me. "I'll send a wire to Kid Christopher's pilot offerin' him fifteen thousand for his end and 'at's all he'll get if he cries his eyes out! Let's sit down now and dope out how much jack we'll need to stage this frolic."

So that's what we done. Allowing fifteen thousand for Kid Christopher's guarantee, three or four thou-


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316 to thee so doughtily and walk so uufettered before their foes.”

“Gunther and Hagen, ye should not deny me this,” spake Dietrich. “Ye have grieved my heart and mind so sore, that it were but right, and ye would requite me, I give you my hand and troth as pledge, that I will ride with you, home to your land, I’ll lead you in all honor, or else lie dead, and for your sakes I will forget my grievous wrongs.”

“Crave this no longer,” answered Hagen. “’T were but little fitting, that the tale be told of us, that two men so brave had given themselves up to you. We see none standing by you, save Hildebrand alone.”

Then up spake Master Hildebrand: “God wot, Sir Hagen, the hour will come, when ye will gladly take the peace, if so be any offer to keep it with you. Ye might well content you with the truce my lord doth offer.”

“Forsooth Id take the truce,” quoth Hagen, “or ever I’d flee from out a hall so shamefully as ye did, Master Hildebrand. I weened, ye could stand better against a foe.”

To this Hildebrand made answer: “Why twit ye me with that? Who was it sate upon a shield hard by the Waskstone, when Walter of Spain slew so many of his kin? Ye, too, have faults enow of your own to show.”

Then spake Sir Dietrich: “I doth it beseem heroes, that, they should scold like aged beldams. I forbid you, Hildebrand, to speak aught more. Grievous wrongs constrain me, homeless warrior. Let’s hear, Knight Hagen, what ye twain did speak, ye doughty men, when ye saw me coming toward you armed? Ye said, that ye alone would fain encounter me in strife.”


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 sand more for the preliminary bouts, and around fifty thousand for rent of a arena, timekeepers, ticket sellers, ushers, referees, advertising, etc and etc., we get a grand total of about $70,000 for expenses, without counting my share of the purse.

As champion, I'm entitled to at least a third of the gross receipts, and I figure with proper publicity the fight will draw almost a $200,000 gate. With expenses and my share totalling, say $130,000, that leaves seventy thousand profit to go to the people which put up the forty thousand in Drew City, or almost two to one for their money. That's, of course, if everything goes O. K.

Nate glances over the list of investors and he suddenly looks up.

"Does Rags Dempster ever crack anything about 'at ten grand he gypped you out of?" he asks.

"I never see him no more, Nate," I says, "and I'm just as tickled."

"Yeah?" snarls Nate. "Well, I'll make him or his old man come through with 'at jack if it's the last thing I do!"

He gets up and grabs his hat. "Wait here," he says, with a odd smile. "You think you're good as a collector—well, I'm going over and bear down heavy on old man Dempster, and I bet I can make him see his way clear to investin' ten thousand in our fight!"

Nate's gone before I realize that he's going to try and make Rags Dempster's father pay back the ten thousand his sissy son got away from me.

A hour comes and goes and no sign of Nate. Then


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 Judy trips into the office, looking kind of puzzled. She says she didn't know that Nate and Rags was so friendly. I ask her what does she mean and she says she has just saw them going into the office of the Dempster Carpet Factory, arm in arm. It's my turn to look puzzled, and that's what I'm doing when Nate busts in, out of breath and grinning like a hyena.

"I'm what you call a collectin' fool!" He pants, throwing a pink slip of paper down in front of me." There's your ten grand—laugh that off!"

I snatched up the paper and sure enough it's a check for ten thousand, signed by old man Dempster.

"Do you mean to tell me that Mr. Dempster took your word that his son owed me that money?" I says, in amazement.

"No," says Nate. "He took his son's word for it!"

"What on earth made Rags act decently, for once in his life?" butts in Judy.

"This!" says Nate, reaching back on his hip and throwing a ugly-looking automatic on the desk. Judy gasps and edges away. "I meet this Rags on the street," goes on Nate, "and I tell him if he don't come over to his old man with me and promote 'at ten grand I'll cook him! Rags laughs. Then I move close to him and let him feel the gat in my pocket. When he starts to squawk I says make it snappy, or I'll put a hole in him you could drive a truck through. 'At makes Rags see things in a different light, and we wind up in his old man's office. I speak my piece, and, with the gun at his back through my coat, Rags says I'm tellin' the truth. The old boy's burnt up, but he