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 middle of the jungle! I wired Dummy Carney "Sold!" grabbed the Bearcat, and lammed for Cleveland. On the en route the sacrifice wants to know how much they is in this fracas for him. Up to that time the Bearcat had the idea that the only guys in the world which eat regular was Al Vanderbilt and Jack Rockefeller.

"Well," I says, "you oughta grab about three hundred men for your end. That's if you can keep from kissin' the rosin for a coupla rounds. But, of course, they is no use speakin' of the impossible!"

"Three hundred for me?" he hollers, leapin' up in the seat. "Say—who am I gonna fight, the Marines?"

"Look here, stupid," I says. "Never mind worryin' about who you're gonna battle—you don't see it botherin' me, do you? You're the most selfish guy I ever heard tell of! I gotta be sittin' up night and day gettin' tramps for you to trim, wearin' my fingers to the bone signin' contracts, gettin' a occasional line of hooch about you in the papers, and the etc., and all you gotta do is put on a pair of nice white trunks, step through the ropes, take a pastin', and get paid off. Pretty soft for you! Suppose I had signed you to fight the Marines—as long as you get the sugar, what do you care?"

"All right," he grins, pattin' me on the shoulder, "don't get sore. Tell them babies they gotta leave their bay'nets in the dressin' room and I'll take a chance!"

Dummy Carney met me at the train in Cleveland and gimme the works. One-Punch Loughlin was

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 gonna let the Bearcat stay the limit if he hadda hold him up, and then we was all goin' to Philly for a return bout a month later, which Dummy would properly work up and at which Loughlin would flatten the Bearcat without no more further formalities. The second mêlée would be level, as Dummy figured the Bearcat was too much of a ham to be worth while savin' for any more. For this last fray I was guaranteed $1,500 for the Bearcat's end, and I never seen a thin dime of it, because the second fight never come off. Bearcat Reed steps through the ropes at Cleveland, squints across the ring, and sees his comin' vis-à-vis just climbin' up and bowin' to the wild applause. Up jumps the Bearcat.

"One-Punch Loughlin, hey?" he yelps. "Nothin' stirrin'! Why, this guy would tear my head off! What d'ye mean by throwin' me in here with that baby? You claimed this would be a spread for me!"

"Shut up, you !" I hisses. "We'll fight this guy. He ain't gonna try and—"

"Where d'ye get that we stuff?" sneers the Bearcat. "You mingle with him—I'll watch it!" and he'd of ducked through the ropes if I hadn't grabbed him.

"Listen!" I whispers in his ear. "If you crab this, I'll stick a knife in you the first time you come to your corner! We're gonna fight Loughlin a world series, and this one to-night is only a stall for the real sugar, get me? Loughlin's gonna be under wraps all the way, and all you gotta do is make a showin'. Tear outa your corner like you're gonna bite his nose off, git mad and make faces—know what I mean? If you make this look good to-night, you drag down

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 five hundred bucks for your next start. How 'bout that?"

"This guy will about croak me!" gasps the Bearcat, as white as the referee's shirt should of been. "But, speakin' of makin' a showin'—I'm gonna do that thing for a coupla seconds, anyways!"

Clang! goes the bell.

A wise-lookin' bird, sittin' back of me, jumps up and yells at the Bearcat: "Rush him, kid, he ain't got nothin'!"

One-Punch Loughlin comes slowly out, grinnin' at close friends and noddin' politely to acquaintances.

The next minute two thousand innocent bystanders has gone crazy and Dummy Carney has fell into the water bucket in a dead faint!

The second the bell rung Bearcat Reed, lookin' like a guy on his way to the chair and actin' on the principle of kill or get killed, has charged half-way across the ring yellin': "Old men and cripples, get back of the ropes!" A foot from the dumfounded Loughlin, this bird, which ordinarily could out-dive all the seals in the world once he got in a ring, smashes a right to the button of Loughlin's jaw, and Dummy Carney's comin' champ hits the mat so hard I bet he was pickin' rosin outa his face for a month! The referee counted to "six," took another squint at the study in still life at his feet, and waved the dazed Bearcat to his corner. I hadda throw twelve guys outa the ring so's I could get his gloves off. A artist which could of painted the expression on Bearcat Reed's face as he sat there with his eyes and mouth as open as Central Park, gazin' at One-Punch Loughlin asleep at the switch, would

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 of become famous on that one picture. The Bearcat looked like a guy which has struck a match on lower Broadway and seen the Woolworth Buildin' immediately go up in flames!

Of course it was a fluke win. It wouldn't happen again in a million years, but—it happened then, which was ample for the Bearcat. That lucky wallop got his name all over the country, and started me toward pilotin' a world's champion. Somebody must of slipped all the four-leaf clovers in the world into the Bearcat's hair, because the next day he puts his cut of the Loughlin fight on a 20 to I shot, which win pulled up, and I don't see him again for six months. One-Punch Loughlin fin'ly come back to life, and the first thing he done was to bust Dummy Carney in the nose, claimin' he had been framed, and then he grabs another manager, which took him over to England, where the set-ups runs wild. And there we will leave them, gentle reader, for the time bein', because this is the story of Kane Halliday, alias "Kid Roberts," and that's as far as the poor old Bearcat and One-Punch Loughlin figures in it right now. Them guys was just the preliminary birds I trotted out to entertain the crowd, and now, boys and girls, the "next ex-e-bition bout of the evenin' is Kid Roberts, Yale '17, vs. Battlin' Fate, twelve rounds to a decision. Weights: Roberts, 195; Fate—all the rest. Gents, kindly stop smokin'. I thank you!"

The day after Bearcat Reed flattened One-Punch Loughlin and followed that idiotic act by leavin' me flat, I met Dummy Carney, the other victim, in the

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 lobby of the hotel. One of his eyes is garbed in the conventional black and his nose is a trifle outa true. He let forth a beller of the opposite to joy when he seen me, and I was the best part of a hour convincin' him that I hadn't deliberately double-crossed him, and that me and the Bearcat was more stunned than he was when his battler wilted.

"Well, they is one thing about Loughlin—he proved to the wide, wide world that they is somethin' in a name, anyways!"

"What d'ye mean?" growls Dummy.

"Well," I says, grinnin' demurely, "you called him One-Punch Loughlin, and that's exactly what he was! If you remember the late holocaust, the Bearcat only landed one wallop on your ex-man-killer's chin, and he immediately turned in his resignation, didn't he?"

"The big yellah dog!" groans Dummy. "I had him signed for seven fights in the next coupla months that would of win me around twenty thousand berries. From the telegrams I got this mornin' you'd think I had just been elected governor of half a dozen States, and every one of them wires is cancelin' Loughlin. Kin you imagine him runnin' out on me too? If that guy fights for anybody else, I'll have him put in the hoosegow till St. Looey wins a pennant! I can start off by suin' him and—"

"You'll get fat suin' Loughlin!" I shuts him off. "John the Barber sued Dempsey for breach of promise, and all John got was a introduction to all the lawyers in America. Forget about Loughlin—you're well rid of him, anyways. After a exercise boy like Bearcat

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 Reed knockin' him dead with a punch, they wouldn't let Loughlin in a fight club now if he had a ticket! I'm gonna shove off for New York, and you better come along with me. The way they been breakin' for me, I gotta good mind to get outa the fight game altogether and turn square!"

Dummy begins to clear his throat and rub his hands together for a minute, and then suddenly he turns to me and lowers his voice:

"We kin grab a rattler outa here to-night," he says. "Stick around for a couple minutes, and you'll git a flash at the next heavyweight champion of the world and joints west! That's if he shows up," he adds.

"You certainly have become a pig for punishment, Dummy!" I grins. "Who's this guy?"

"Kane Halliday!" he whispers like he was sayin' "The Sheriff of Shantung!" or the like. "How 'bout that?"

"It don't mean nothin' in my young life," I says. "How d'ye play it?"

"You never heard tell of Kane Halliday?" he gasps like his ears is both liars. "The big, now, football star, the weights thrower, the—the—runner, the—ah—what they call a roundabout athalete? You know, one of them bimbos which flings a wicked spear and hurls a mean hammer and that there stuff, get me? Why, they claim this baby beat Harvard and the other college all by himself!"

"That ain't my fault," I yawns. "And I can't identify the body yet."

"Was bein' stupid cold, you'd be zero!" snarls Dummy. "Why, the papers was full of this guy!"

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 "The papers is got nothin' on me," I says, gettin' up. "I'm full of him too! So long!"

But he calls me back, and in about twenty minutes I have got the low down on Monsieur Kane Halliday.

This guy had been committed to college with the idea that when he come out he'd be at the very least a civil engineer, though most of the engineers I know learned their trade in a and yard and was civil enough as far as that part of it goes. Halliday's people was supposed to have a dollar for every egg in a shad roe, and the boy treated the civil engineer thing as a practical joke and college as somethin' he had been gave for Christmas to play with. The principal studies he devoted his time and attention to was football, wrestlin', runnin', dancin', boxin', playin' saxophone in the Glee Club and poker in the others. He won more gold and silver cups than the Crown Prince lifted from Belgium, was the most popular guy that ever wore a "Y" on his sweater, and as a reward he fin'ly got throwed outa dear old Yale on his ear without even a reference, let alone a diploma, because he had a prejudice against enterin' a classroom. He hit the cruel world about the same time Germany did, and he played with the Allies as a dizzy aviator.

When he come back he was greeted with the delightful information that his old man had gone broke on the war, and it was up to him to make the acquaintance of Manual Labor, provided he wished to continue his daily consumption of proteins and calories, as they wittily refer to food in Battle Creek. Instead of goin' down to the drug store and quaffin' off a beaker of

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 arsenic when he heard of this tough break, Young Halliday borreys enough sugar to send his thoughtless parent down to South America for a rest, brushes back his hair, and starts out to dumfound the universe with stunts that would make a Douglas Fairbanks thriller look reasonable. With the reputation he had grabbed off at college he figured he was in soft, and it was only a question which bank he'd start off bein' president of.

It took the kid about a month to find out that the young men which writes all the movies, novels, and plays in which they is a hero amongst the other characters is slightly addicted to exaggeration. The fact that his father had been granted a absolute divorce from his bank roll had leaked out, and his one-time buddies become the busiest guys in North America when he went to call on 'em.

Now, if Halliday had only known a scenario writer, he would of been tipped off to sneak out immediately for the "great open stretches of the untamed Northwest," where, as a six-day-old infant knows, "a man has his chance to live clean, fight hard and square, and win his way to the top with his pure-hearted, fearless, flashing-eyed, and becomingly, though sensibly, garbed mate at his side." Or he could of gone to punchin' cows, reformin' all the rough yet golden-hearted cowboys by his inability to cuss and his ability to fan a six gun, windin' up by weddin' the rancher's sensationally beautiful daughter, which had been to New York and is through with the cold, merciless, and gilded sham of the city, and craves for the sweet smell of the pines, rodeos, cactus, sagebrush, and steers.

Instead of this, Halliday got as far as Ohio, where,

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 whilst waitin' for somethin' to break, he joined a troupe of professional football players made up of ex-college stars. He played full back and had been gettin' from fifty to a hundred a game, which was enough to keep him both full and back. Full of food and back in the spotlight. The All-Star Team, however, was bustin' up in Cleveland, and it was at this point that Dummy Carney, which could dive into a haystack and emerge with ten dollars' worth of needles, come across him. Dummy had heard some of the kid's history from Tin-Ear Fagan, a ex-pug, which was with the team as a rubber and some from Halliday himself.

"...And so," winds up Dummy, pullin' out one of his favorite brand of cigars, which is called "Last One I Got"—"and so I have worked over this baby for a week. He looks like platinum to me! You know what the demand is for heavies right now, and if this guy has got anything at all I can take him around the sticks, and then bring him into New York and clean up with him. In about a year or two, if he's still steppin' out, we'll go after the Big Guy. Say—can you imagine me pilotin' a world's heavyweight champ?"

"I prob'ly could if you would make me a present of a bite of that opium you musta been chewin'!" I sneers. "A college guy, hey? Well, I'll stake you to him! I'm off them amateur champs."

"Wait till you get a flash at this bird!" interrupts Dummy. "Why, he's got a left hand that—ssh!—here he comes. Play dead, now!"

Halliday was class, they's no gettin' away from it. The boy stood well over six foot and was dressed like

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 he had placed all of his football plunder on his back, From my first quick size-up I judged he scaled around 195 ringside when right. He had the light, sure tread of a prowlin' cat, which meant speed, and the cleancut, smooth-muscled bulk, taperin' gradually from the walkin'-beam shoulders to the unusually slim waist, advertised punchin' power. I knew right away that baby packed a nasty wallop somewheres. Dummy said he was twenty-three. He looked older.

Apart from them shop items, he inventoried about as much like a prize fighter as I'm Mary Pickford's double. I thought what a shock it was gonna be to him the first time somebody flattened his nose. It was! But the thing that struck me odd was his eyes. They didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the layout at all. They should of been baby blue and starin' innocently at the world to go with that golden blond hair. But they wasn't. They was a kinda chilled steel gray, and for all the flickin' they did they could of been glass. It was like lookin' into the barrels of a coupla "gats."

He stopped in front of us, nodded kinda nervously to Dummy, and flashed them eyes on me kinda cold.

"S'all right, kid!" says Dummy, catchin' the look. "This guy's my—eh—private secretary. Anything you say in front of him will be used—I mean—well, what d'ye say?"

Halliday grinned as we all sat down and pulled his chair closer to Dummy.

"I've decided to accept your proposition, Carney," says Halliday slowly, settlin' back like he was gettin' ready for a long speech. "Now, in the first place, let us—"

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 But Dummy was on his feet, slappin' him on the shoulder.

"Fine business!" he cackles. "Inside a year your income will sound like the population of China multeyplied by two, and like as not I'll have a couple of pennies myself! Now, they's no use of you gettin' all tired out talkin'; lemme take charge of that part of it. We start in to-morrow night rakin' in the golden stream. Wait here till I send a wire!"

Oh, Dummy was a fast worker, they's no doubt of that.

Halliday looked after him kinda dazed, and then he wiggles them pliable iron shoulders of his and laughs. We traded a few remarks about this and that, holdin' each other even till Dummy come bustlin' back.

"Now we're all set!" he says to Halliday. "I kinda thought you'd see the light, so I booked you in Sandusky a few days ago at the Crescent A. C. We're gonna box young Du Fresne, heavyweight champion of Canada, twelve rounds to a decision. You'll prob'ly kill that bimbo with a punch, and then we jump to Columbus, and—"

Halliday turns a slow smile on Dummy and holds up his hand.

"Your opinion of my ability is certainly flattering, old man!" he interrupts, "and your system at least seems to have the merit of originality. My first bout is to be with the Canadian champion, eh? What do you propose that I do—start at the top and work my way down?" He chuckled like the kid he was.

"Heh?" snorts Dummy. "Oh—this Du Fresne guy? Say—if he's champion of Canada, then I'm next

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 in line for the English throne; get that? He used to fight in the preliminaries around New York under the name of Set-Up Jim Byrnes, and he's wore out more tights reclinin' on the floor of a ring than any fighter which ever pulled on a glove! Lefty Murray's rechristened him and is takin' him around the flat-car circuit till somethin' breaks. D'ye think I'd let you go in there if this guy was any good? All I hope is that you don't fracture his skull!"

"But—" begins Halliday.

"This playin' football was a bright idea," goes on Dummy. "It's kept you in steady trainin' all the time, which saves me a lotta trouble." He turns to me. "Boy, heme. "Boy," he [sic] says, "that football thing is one tough pastime. Kin you imagine them cuckoos doin' that stuff for nothin'?" He swings around on Halliday again, which was watchin' him like he was a curiosity. "You ain't mixed up with no dame, are you?" he demands, suspiciously.

The most astonishin' change come over the charmin' features of Monsieur Halliday. His eyebrows becomes one straight line, and them cold eyes gets down to about the size of match heads. I found myself givin' a little shiver, and he wasn't even lookin '  at me. He took a half step forward, and I says to myself: "Fare thee well, Dummy Carney!" and friend Dummy's complexion got a shade lighter, whilst a silly grin appeared on his nervous lips. But they was no bloodshed.

Halliday coughed a coupla times, and then his color came back.

"Eh—we will leave the personal element entirely out

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 of our discussions for the present, Carney," he says, his voice a chill breeze. "As I understand my arrangement with you, it is a purely business affair. We will keep it that way!"

"Sure!" nods Dummy quickly and with the greatest of relief. "And there's that! Now, speakin' of business, from now on your name will be Kid Roberts, unless you get trimmed under that name, in which case we will get you a nice fresh new one and start you over again. That Kane Halliday is a swell name for a collar or a hotel, but it don't mean nothin' in the ring—O. K.?"

They was no argument about that end of it—in fact, it seemed to please Halliday, which from now on, gentle reader, we will call Kid Roberts, as they never was no necessity to change it.

"A lulu, hey?" whispers Dummy in my ear when Kid Roberts has gone upstairs to pack up. "He's been workin' out here for a week up at the Arena Club. I've had him under a pull to save his hands, but he's flattened a dozen handlers with a left hook that don't travel over six inches! That's poor, eh?"

"He looks worth a bet," I says, carelessly. "I only hope he don't blow up on you to-morrow night, that's all."

"What d'ye mean blow up?" snarls Dummy. "He oughta be able to take a roomful of guys like Du Fresne—you know that!"

"Oughta be able and can do is different," I grins. "A lotta wise birds figured Willard should of let Dempsey come in with a gun to make it a little more even, but look what happened! You wanna figure that

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 this boy will be doin' somethin' to-morrow night he never done before, and that conditions is gonna be a whole lot changed for him. The first shock of that crowd is gonna have some effect on your battler, Dummy, and whether it'll be good or bad, I can't guess. I've seen some it made quit cold and some it made fightin' fools; it's accordin' to how a guy's nerves is hooked up. Now—"

"The crowd won't bother this guy," interrupts Dummy. "He's fought before witnesses in college and the like."

"I bet he never heard no ringside prattle like he'll hear to-morrow!" I says. "And they's another thing. Your child wonder may pack a mean wallop, but the thing is—can he take it? You know this Du Fresne, bein' led to the slaughter, will be all hopped up to make a terrible flash in the openin' canto. If he shakes Kid Roberts up with a coupla chance swings, and the crowd begins to roar for the Kid's blood, will he stand up under fire or will he wilt? Think of Bearcat Reed knockin' One-Punch Loughlin dead! Can this Roberts baby fight with a closed eye, or a busted nose, or—"

"Aw, shut up!" hollers Dummy. "You should of been a undertaker! Kid Roberts won't have to take it—he'll flatten this guy with one clout. I'll lay you a hundred even it don't go two rounds—what d'ye say?"

"Sold!" I says. "Dummy, I ain't figurin' your boy yellah. I'm figurin' on a thing called temperament which I have run up against before. I wouldn't be surprised if the muss went the limit, because I'm afraid

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 if Roberts gets hurt early, bein' green, he'll play safe and be satisfied to stall the rest of it and dog it."

Dummy snorted, but he looked worried. "If he can't take it, I don't wish no part of him," he says. "I'll leave him flat in this Sandusky joint if he don't come through on the bit!"

Well, I went to Sandusky with 'em as Dummy's guest, and also at the sudden request of Kid Roberts to go behind him in his corner for his first fight for money. He seemed to have taken a likin' to me for some reason, and they is no doubt I was for him strong. You couldn't help fall for him; he was just a big, swell-lookin', boy. For instance, goin' down in the train he made friends with about a dozen kids, and when we pulled into Sandusky he was drawin' Pictures for 'em of elephants on the back of his contract with Dummy. Kid Roberts belonged in the ring the same way I belong in the White House!

Dummy was afraid of sendin' him in too cold after the train ride, and, findin' that the club had a gym in connection with it, he sneaks the Kid down there and has him step around a little with a big dinge which was workin' out. They had been at it about a minute when the Kid rocks the tar baby with a right to the body and brings up his left for his man's jaw. But this dark guy knew too much for Roberts, and with a grunt he shifted his bullethead just enough to let the wallop swish by. The force of the punch carried Roberts forward on his toes, and his fist crashed into a steam pipe with everything he had behind it. Dummy let out a wild shriek and waved the dinge away, but

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 the Kid only grinned kinda sheepish, like he was ashamed he had been so clumsy. The hand was red and swollen a bit when we come to tape it before the fight, but it didn't look like nothin' serious, so Dummy soused it with arnica and let it go at that.

The Kid was cool enough, though a trifle pale whilst we was sittin' in the dressin' room waitin' for the semifinal to wind up, and his eyes happened to fall on a newspaper I had brung in. On the front page is a picture of some well-to-do heiress which had just come back to New York from Shantung or some place where she had been wilin' away the winter. Roberts snatches it up and gazes at it with a hungry look. I don't blame him. She looked as pretty as $5,000 a week would look to a motorman.

"What a rotten photo!" he mutters, half to himself. "She looks fit, though."

"Friend of yours?" I says, drapin' the bathrobe over his shoulders.

He's still in a trance over the picture.

"Oh—eh—yes—eh—quite so!" he mumbles. "How the devil can I get to New York to-morrow?" he inquires of himself, not even noticin' me.

I filed that one away for future reference. I heard a whole lot about the lady afterward—in fact, I met her under exceedin'ly odd conditions. But—

It was about ten o'clock when we swum through the cigarette smoke, pushed down the aisle, and climbed through the ropes, amid the dull rumble of excited voices, as the papers says. The mob, which had never heard tell of Kid Roberts before and, for all they knew,

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 said: "Tell me, dear Horatio, are you to be married next week?" He dropped her hand as if a rifle ball had struck him; and it was not until after long hesitation, that he began to make some reply about the necessity of circumstances. Mildly but earnestly the poor girl begged him to spare apologies. It was enough that he no longer loved her, and that they must bid farewell. Trusting to the yielding tenderness of her character, he ventured, in the most soothing accents, to suggest that as he still loved her better than all the world, she would ever be his real wife, and they might see each other frequently. He was not prepared for the storm of indignant emotion his words excited. True, she was his slave; her bones, and sinews had been purchased by his gold, yet she had the heart of a true woman, and hers was a passion too deep and absorbing to admit of partnership, and her spirit was too pure to form a selfish league with crime.

At length this painful interview came to an end. They stood together by the Gothic gate, where they had so often met and parted in the moonlight. Old remembrances melted their souls. "Farewell, dearest Horatio," said Clotel. "Give me a parting kiss." Her voice was choked for utterance, and the tears flowed freely, as she bent her lips toward him. He folded her convulsively in his arms, and imprinted a long impassioned kiss on that mouth, which had never spoken to him but in love and blessing. With efforts like a death-pang she at length raised her head from his heaving bosom, and turning from him with bitter sobs, "It is our last. To meet thus is henceforth crime. God bless you. I would not have you so miserable as I am. Farewell. A last farewell." "The last?" exclaimed he, with a wild shriek. "Oh God, Clotel, do not say that;" and covering his face with his hands, he wept like a

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 never would again, presented him with a wild cheer. All they knew was that two big guys was gonna mingle, and the chances was excellent that at least one of them would be knocked cold. The Kid bowed very solemnly to the cheer, which act drawed a laugh that didn't help his high-strung nerves a bit.

They was no sign of Young Du Fresne as yet. Roberts shuffled his feet and stared down at 'em, bitin' his lips. A bad sign! The glarin' lights beatin' down on his head, the blood spattered around in his corner from the last brawl, and the noisy crowd was raisin' merry Hades with him.

Some roughneck hollered: "You won't be so pretty, pretty soon, Cutey!"

Another one bawled: "Who brung that chorus man in?"

"Ain't he got lovely skin?" come from somewheres else.

By this time the Kid's feet was doin' a shimmy on the floor. Them sensitive ears of his caught every word, and this rough, sarcastical stuff was like stabbin' him with hot needles, only more so. He was exactly like a two-year-old at the post for the first time. The case-hardened bruiser would of grinned back at the crowd and waved at 'em, and prob'ly got a big hand in return. The sympathies of a fight crowd is as changeable as a woman's mind, but still and all very easy to figure. They're always with the winner, no matter if the guy on the floor is their brother.

I gotta hand it to Lefty Murray, Young Du Fresne's pilot. He kept his man outa the ring till the crowd was ready to tear the roof off with impatience, knowin'

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 what the wear and tear would be on the waitin' Rob erts. He kicked and argued about every point like the fight was for the world's championship. He found fault with the referee, the paddin' of the ring, the lights, and was startin' a long argument about the way the Kid's hands was taped, when Roberts jumped up and stopped it. His nerves was shot to pieces. Not nerve—nerves. Sweet Mamma, but there's a difference!

"Come on!" busts out the Kid. "Let's get it over with!"

Lefty Murray looked him over coolly and grinned. The Kid's drawn face and quiverin' muscles told him aplenty. I knew what he was tellin' his man after they shook hands, just as if I was in Du Fresne's corner: "Get in close and play for his body. Keep on top of him—don't let him set. If you shake him up right off the bat, he's through!"

This Du Fresne looked more like a gorilla than a human bein', and prob'ly was. He was a good twenty pounds heavier than the Kid, and what would of been a face on the average guy was simply a puffed, scarred, and pulpy mass. He growled and glared ferociously at the Kid from his corner, and the crowd yelled like a pack of wolves. The Kid grinned back at him faintly and begin wettin' his lips with his tongue.

Dummy had left the handlin' of the Kid entirely up to me, with a coupla boys which had just massacred each other in a preliminary for a purse of $10, as towel wavers. Whilst I was massagin' the Kid's stomach, which felt as tough and ridged as a washboard under my hands, I let fall the remark that Du

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 Fresne couldn't take it and would quit like a dog the minute he got hurt. Then the bell rung.

Du Fresne was off his stool and half-way across the ring before the Kid had hardly straightened up. He smashed a left to the body that shook Roberts from stem to stern, but whilst the mob was still jumpin' up on their chairs and shriekin', the Kid feinted Du Fr sne with his own left and then shot a right hook to the head that hurled Du Fresne back a half dozen feet before he crashed down on his face. That wallop landed a bit high, or the quarrel would of been over right then and there. Du Fresne stumbled to his feet at "nine" for the simple reason that he had been told he wouldn't get a nickel if he didn't last at least a coupla rounds. Dummy screamed for the Kid to wade in and finish his man, but the yellin' and excitement upset the boy's judgment, and he allowed Du Fresne to dive into a clinch, where that thankful baby hung on glassy-eyed till the referee pried 'em apart. The Kid dropped him twice more for short counts before the bell, and Du Fresne reeled to his corner, bleedin' from the nose and mouth and practically out on his feet. Roberts didn't even have his hair mussed. The joyful mob was with him to a man. He looked a winner all over, and I figured he'd knock Du Fresne kickin' with the first wallop in the next round. Dummy jumped in and sponged the Kid's face, as happy as a girl with her first engagement ring.

The rest seemed to have done Du Fresne a lotta good, and he come out for the second innin' as fresh as a daisy, but not as good-lookin'. The way some of them tramps can recover from a beatin' that would kill

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 a horse is somethin' I never been able to understand! He missed a wild swing to the jaw, and Roberts jolted him with a wicked right that lifted him a inch from the floor, but he kept his feet and, backin' into a corner like he was ready to call it a day, he covered his head with his arms and waited patiently to get it. Once again the customers jumps up on their chairs; once again they was treated to a disappointment. Instead of steppin' in and polishin' off this guy with a coupla well-placed punches, the Kid stands off and waits for him to recover. I though Dummy Carney would go crazy. "Bring up that left, you boob!" he kept screamin'. The referee walks over to the Kid and slaps him on the shoulders: "Go on, fight!" he snarls. "What are you gonna do—kiss him?"

Now, the Kid's ace was his left hook, which after one try he put back in the safe. I noticed a queer look on his face, as if he couldn't understand how come he had delivered that man killer and yet Du Fresne was still alive. I caught him glancin' down at the left glove a coupla times like he wanted to be sure the hand was still in it, and then all of a sudden he shakes his head and stops usin' it altogether. He simply give up. As far as his famous left hook was concerned, he could of checked it outside the clubhouse! Du Fresne managed to last out the second round by clinchin' at every chance and holdin' on like rheumatism. Right before the bell he suddenly straightened up and split the Kid's lips with a jab that brought a stream of red when it come away. The mob howled, but Roberts grinned and come back with a smash to the short ribs that dropped Du Fresne gaspin' to his knees.

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 The history of this conflict falls beyond my subject, and I must be content with this brief reference, which proves, amongst other things, the interest created by Pope's advocacy of the most characteristic doctrines of his time on the minds of the greatest leaders of the revolutionary movement.

Meanwhile, however, Crousaz was translated into English, and Pope was terribly alarmed. His "guide, philosopher, and friend" had returned to the Continent (in 1735), disgusted with his political failure, but was again in England from June, 1738, to May, 1739. We know not what comfort he may have given to his unlucky disciple, but an unexpected champion suddenly arose. William Warburton (born 1698) was gradually pushing his way to success. He had been an attorney's clerk, and had not received a university education; but his multifarious reading was making him conspicuous, helped by great energy, and by a quality which gave some plausibility to the title bestowed on him by Mallet, "The most impudent man living." In his humble days he had been intimate with Pope's enemies, Concanen and Theobald, and had spoken scornfully of Pope, saying, amongst other things, that he "borrowed for want of genius," as Addison borrowed from modesty and Milton from pride. In 1736 he had published his first important work, the Alliance between Church and State, and in 1738 followed the first instalment of his principal performance, the Divine Legation. During the following years he was the most conspicuous theologian of the day, dreaded and hated by his opponents, whom he unsparingly bullied, and dominating a small clique of abject admirers. He is said to have condemned the Essay on Man when it first appeared. He called it a collection of the worst

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 When the Kid ran to his corner at the end of the second round, the sportsmen which had paid large quantities of lucre to see a knock-out was loudly and bitterly complainin'. They was off Kid Roberts for life and tellin' the world about it. They'd seen him hit Du Fresne with everything but the club's license, yet Du Fresne was still alive, which was all wrong. Evidently this Roberts couldn't hit, and a heavy that can't hit is as popular as foot warmers in Hades.

Dummy begged, cried, and threatened for the Kid to go in and kill Du Fresne, but Kid Roberts had apparently lost all interest in the combat. Du Fresne waddled out to the middle of the ring like he couldn't believe his own eyes that he was still on his feet, but, actin' upon advice from his corner, he got to work again. He put a coupla light lefts to the face without a return from Dummy's hope, and then the Kid started to swing with this guy. The rough-house stuff was Du Fresne's dish, and in no time at all he had closed the Kid's right eye and had his sore lip puffed up like a balloon. The Kid made a few weak returns with his right, usin' that dynamite left for blockin' and feintin' purposes only, and the dumfounded Du Fresne got more courage every second. Comin' out of a clinch, he swung a vicious right to the Kid's stomach and folleyed that with a clip on the jaw that staggered Roberts and drove whatever judgment he had left outa his head. He missed a dozen right swings, and then fell into one from Du Fresne that opened a gash under his burn eye a inch deep. The crowd was roarin' for a knockout, and Du Fresne's manager was on the verge

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 of the hystericals. At a yell from his corner, Du Fresne shifted his attack to the Kid's mid section and suddenly hooked a left and right to the body that doubled Roberts into a pantin' knot. He was too excited to folley up his advantage, or it would of been curtains for the Kid. He fell wildly into a clinch, but Du Fresne shook him off and stabbed the sore eye with a nasty straight-arm right that sent Roberts staggerin' to his corner, punch drunk and gory.

The fourth and fifth rounds was the same as the third. Du Fresne pasted the Kid from pillar to post, cuttin' him to ribbons with nasty left and right chops, but Roberts still refused to use his left, swingin' wildly with his right and divin' into a clinch whenever he got hurt, which was early and often. He didn't land a half dozen solid punches from the second round on. In Du Fresne's corner they was havin' a party.

In the middle of the sixth round, with Du Fresne chasin' the battered Kid all over the ring and makin' a choppin' block of him, Dummy, havin' cussed, cried, and yelled himself hoarse, jumps up and whispers in my ear: "I'm through with this big stiff for life! He's as yellah as a barrel of grapefruit. You was right, they's always somethin' wrong with them gymnasium world beaters. This guy can't take it. Look at him wilt every time he stops one. I'm gonna duck; I don't wanna see no more of it!"

"D'ye wanna get rid of him?" I says innocently.

"Make me a offer!" he snaps.

"Well," I says, watchin' the ring outa the corner of my eye, "you owe me a hundred berries on account

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 From this time I had the job of watching every night that madame was not tormented by bugs. My service by day was rendered much easier. Considerations, anticipations, little presents—nothing was spared; I was, like the conscript of Charlet, nourished, shod, clothed, and put to bed at the expense of the princess. Unfortunately, the princess was somewhat jealous, and her rule a little despotic. Madame Duflos asked nothing more but that, in more senses than one, I should arouse myself like a hump-backed man; but she went into the most tremendous fits of rage if I even glanced at another woman. At last, worn out by this tyranny, I declared one evening that I would free myself from it.

"Ah! you will leave me then," said she, "we will see about that."

Then arming herself with a knife, she darted at me to plunge it into my heart. I seized her arm, and her rage being appeased, I agreed to remain, on condition that she would be more reasonable. She promised; but, from the next day, curtains of green taffety were placed over the windows of the room in which I was placed, as madame had thought it fit to entrust me exclusively with keeping her books. This proceeding was the more vexatious, as I had then no prospect of any control over the work-room.

Madame Duflos was most ingenious in isolating me from the rest of the world; every day there was a new precaution for my security. At last, my slavery was so rigorous that every person saw through the tenderness of which I was the object. The shop girls, who liked nothing better than teasing madame, came to speak to me every instant, sometimes with one excuse, sometimes another; poor Madame Duflos was tormented to death by it! how pitiable! Every hour in the day she poured forth her reproaches on me, and never gave one instant's intermission. I could not for any length of time remain easy under such despotism. To avoid a burst, which, in my situation, might have involved


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 of the kid not winnin' in a round. Gimme his contract and it's even all around!"

That's how I got Kid Roberts. A year and a half later Dummy Carney stood in the lobby of Madison Square Garden and, with tears in his eyes, offered me $30,000 for that contract back!

As Dummy snaked his way out through the crowd, I looked up in time to see Du Fresne hang the Kid over the ropes with a volley of lefts and rights, and the referee was lookin' over at me for the sponge. A left chop connected solidly and the Kid slid to the floor, restin' on his hands and knees. The bell clanged at "eight," and we dragged Roberts to his corner and worked over him with everything but a pulmotor.

It's tough to see your man licked, but they is nothin' tougher in the world than to see him licked when you know he can kill the other guy with one well-placed smash! I begged this boy to try that left once more. I tried everything I could think of except Dummy's stuff of callin' him yellah. That's all wrong with these kinda guys. It don't stir 'em up and make 'em go after the other guy hammer and tongs like the novels claims. They get sore at you and remember it for—ever after! Fin'ly I got a wild idea. I remembered that dame's picture in the newspaper and what the Kid had said about goin' to New York. I took a chance.

"You're one swell-lookin' baby for Miss Gresham to see!" I says in his ear, sarcastical as possible.

He looked at me in a dazed way, not seemin' to notice me callin' Her by name.

"Why?" he mumbles.

I held the dressin' room mirror in front of him.

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 You never seen such a change come over nobody in your life. The Kid sees his eye in deep mournin', his lips all purple and puffed outa shape, the bleedin' gash under the glim, and all the rest of his ruined beauty. The one good eye narrows to a pin point and his teeth comes together with a click. He straightens up in his chair and glares across at the leerin' and happy Du Fresne with the benevolent expression of a wounded panther about to charge. The bell rings for the lucky seventh.

The mob took up the bellowin' chant for a knockout, and Du Fresne come slidin' out with a confident grin, which faded with almost comical speed as he got that glare in the Kid's workin' eye. He faltered in his stride and was short with a right to the face. He commenced to back away and look to his corner for advice, and the Kid stepped in and buried his right to the wrist in his stomach. Du Fresne's grunt could be heard in Paris, and he dropped his guard to protect that tremblin' paunch. The Kid coolly measured him, and, quick as a flash of startled light, brought up his left for the second time in the entire debate. It landed flush on Du Fresne's jaw and crashed him through the ropes into the laps of the newspaper guys, as cold as the middle of Iceland!

"Why didn't you pull that left before?" I demanded, tugging at the Kid's gloves as the perfectly satisfied mob milled out through the doors.

He gimme a odd grin.

I pulled and hauled, but that glove wouldn't move. Fin'ly I took out my penknife and cut it off his wrist. Then I nearly fell over the ropes myself. His left

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 hand was a ugly-lookin' purple and swelled to twice its size.

"I broke a bone or two when I idiotically hit that steam pipe before the fight to-night," he explains cheerfully. "That's why I—eh—rather favored it afterward!"

Imagine goin' into a fight with a broken hand! Imagine knockin' a two-hundred-and-fifteen-pound guy out with it!

"But—but," I splutters, "why did you go through with the scrap if you knew that, you darn fool! Why didn't you say somethin'? We could of called it off and—"

"That's exactly what I thought you would do," he smiles, "and I couldn't afford to have that happen. To be frank with you, I'm broke!"

He looks around curiously. "Where's Carney?" he asks. "He said some things to me I'd like to take up with him!" His voice was hard again.

"Oh, don't mind Dummy," I says. "He got a tough break to-night—lost the best scrapper in his stable!"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" he says. "Influenza?"

"Nope—inexperience!" I tells him. "Well, let's get outa here, hey?"

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ability to take a unmerciful beatin' has made many a box fighter famous which had absolutely nothin' else to recommend him. Ring records all the ways down from the time Battlin' David knocked One Round Goliath for a goal is studded with the names of these gluttons for punishment whose motto is a steal from the Salvation Army's "A man may be down, but he's never out!" Their favorite punch is delivered with some part of their battered face to the point of the other guy's glove, and they seldom if ever miss. They may never become champs; in fact, the plurality of these babies is usually about tenth-raters, but they'll always be in demand at fancy prices because the difference between the modern prize-fight fan and the cuckoos which used to sit around Nero and holler for the gladiators to quit stallin' and knife each other has stopped at the matter of dress. The average follower of the manly art insists that his favorites be guys of red blood—in fact, he carries his enthusiasm to the point where he wants to see 'em covered with it!

Few of these here "iron men"—even the handful which has slugged their way to the top of the heap—knows any more about scientific boxin '  than a hen

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 does about tooth powder. They can tell the referee from a right cross, and they know that every time a bell rings whilst they are in the ring they are allowed to sit down for a minute and wonder why the other guy was allowed to come in with a hatchet; but the real fine points of their trade means zero to them. They are in there to take it, and take it they do with a set, silly grin on their puffed lips which has taken the heart outa many a better fighter who's slashed 'em to ribbons and punched his arms off tryin' to drop 'em for the long count.

Some of them human shock absorbers has held titles for a brief spell in the different divisions and has been very popular with the mob. Any fighter which will keep on gettin' up every time he kisses the canvas, in spite of the fact that both his eyes has observed the one o'clock closin' law, his nose is away outa line, and a ear is floppin' nonchalantly in the breeze, is bound to make a hit with the customers. He's prolongin' the thrill of the thing and givin' the crowd a gallop for its shekels. Their unanimous opinion, screamed at the top of their lungs, is that he's a terrible boob—but the sight of his gore has appealed to their "sportin instincts, and on the way home, in the cool of the evenin', they shake their heads admirin'ly and tell each other what a great scrapper he is at that! Jess Willard, for instance, made more friends by staggerin' blindly to his feet from the crimson-flecked mat, after each of his seven knockdowns in the first round by the jovial Jack Dempsey, than he did when he flattened Johnson for the championship of the world.

I'm always as nervous as a steam drill when I send

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 one of my star battlers in against them choppin' blocks. On the level, they're less worry when they're fightin' a clean, hard puncher which is fast and clever. In the first place, these bums makes your boy look bad to the crowd. They usually got a awkward, clumsy defense that makes 'em difficult to slam in a spot which will send 'em down for the night, and after you have punched one of these bimbos from pillar to post round after round, changin' the outlines of his face, but not his determination to stay the limit, the mob gets the idea that you can't hit, and they're off you!

Many a promisin' youngster has had his hopes wrecked right at the start by one of them human derelicts of the ring—them guys whose only claim to fame is that they can take it! The ambitious kid tears into 'em with everything he's got, and in a coupla rounds he's pounded 'em to a pulp, but still they keep comin' in for more. Every time he flattens 'em they bounce up like a rubber ball, till fin'ly the kid begins to get discouraged. The disappointed crowd is givin' him the raspberry, demandin' the knock-out they paid to see. His confidence fades, and he soon starts wonderin' if he's lost his wallop. He's hit this tramp so hard and often that it's like liftin' a coupla tons of lead to raise his arms, and now his hooks and jabs apparently ain't even shakin' the other guy up. In desperation the kid throws science to the winds and comes in wide open, both hands workin' for that grinnin' battered jaw—that red leer that dances before his face. This is what the tramp has waited all night for! Not havin' landed a dozen clean wallops himself, he's com-

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 But one day as he was hunting he saw an eagle. He closed his eyes and he saw the bird still, but in a different scene. It floated above a mountain that ended in a red precipice and a lake below. He saw not one lake but several, one beyond the other, among the mountains, and upon one a swan floated. Instantly the swan made him think of Niav. In this there was nothing strange. But he thought of her not as she was then, but as she was when he first saw her riding in Killarney, and he saw with equal clearness the warriors bidding him farewell as they had done three hundred years ago. This was memory, and Ossian knew it. Very old and rude and shaggy they looked, like a clump of trees upon a hill-top, and he longed to ride straight away to Killarney. But his heart was troubled. He felt that he could not trust his horse to run upon the waters, so he rode home to Niav and told her and the king that he wished to visit Ireland. They said they would not stop him, but Niav said:

'I fear, Ossian, thou wilt not come back again, once thou hast returned to Ireland. Ireland is not what it was. Finn and the Fena are there no more. Saints and priests are in their places. Yet I fear thou wilt not come back. Thou must not touch the soil of Ireland with thy feet. Thou never canst come back if thou dismount from the white horse and touch Irish earth. Never canst thou see me or I see thee again if thou forget this.'

Ossian wept but he rode away towards Ireland, passing again the islands and continents and cities and palaces. When he reached Ireland he seemed to see nothing that he knew. The smell was the same, some of the distant mountains also. But the Fena were not there. He saw what looked like men far off, but having ridden up to


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 paratively fresh. He feels the sting leavin' the kid's frantic punches; he sees he's losin' heart by his shiftin', worried eyes, and the next minute the crowd is on its feet, goin' crazy, as this bloody wreck tears in, smashes the falterin' kid with a wild haymaker, and it's all over!

Them guys is prouder of their capacity for takin' a maulin' than Dempsey is of his record as a knockerout. Their cauliflower ears, busted noses, and dented faces is to them the Croix de Guerre of their trade. A example of this was Bat Nelson, which held the lightweight title against some of the greatest boxers that ever fought in that class, for no other reason on earth than the fact that them guys broke their hearts, and frequently their hands, tryin' to put him away. Bat used to brag that he wasn't human, and for a long time it looked like that was the answer. If he could box, I can make a automobile. He rarely come out of a scrap without lookin' like he had been run through a meat chopper—the worst tramps which ever stuck their hand in a glove used to paste him with everything but the box office, and then when they was so tired they couldn't even feint him, the grinnin', gore-covered Bat would step in and knock 'em for a goal.

This class of fighter is duck soup for the babies which claims the prize ring brings out gameness that would make a paralyzed arctic explorer or a legless deep-sea diver seem faint-hearted. They point to these guys gettin' up after each, ripped and slashed to pieces, blinded by their own blood, but still borin' in bravely for more punishment. Well, I don't doubt that a lotta these boys has showed more courage than a sightless bullfighter, but my own experience has

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 been that this here same courage is in most cases more a matter of temperament than anything else. The roughneck, boneheaded slugger gets slammed all over the ring and fin'ly floored. He's half in a trance, and he's only got a faint idea of what it's all about; but his legs mechanically raises him upright again without no effort of his dazed brain at all, because they been doin' that same thing for years. The intelligent boxer, knocked kickin' by a wallop, has been in the habit of usin' his head to think with, and said head is now ringin' like a set of chimes. The crazy yells of the crowd comes to him like the boom of a roarin' surf, his glassy eyes rolls around inquirin'ly, and in the ten seconds it takes him to clear his dome and try to figure what he'll do when he gets up he's counted out and often called yellah. Nine times outa ten this baby's just as game as the other guy, or gamer—he's built temperamentally different, that's all!

My idea of the real gamester is the bird which can't take it and knows he can't, but takes his chance with the toughest the game can produce in his efforts to get to the top! The guy with the glass jaw or the weakmuscled stomach that's gotta win quick or not at all. The nervous, imaginative baby which takes more mental punishment in his corner waitin' for the first bell than he ever does from any guy's gloves and that's gotta lick himself before he even faces the cuckoo in the other corner. The kind that, if he fought eighty-six times a day every day in the week, would never get over the soul-tearin' torture of the sneerin', howlin' mob around the ring, the sight of blood, the glarin' calcium over his head, the jarrin' impact of fist on

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 bone, the possibilities in the other guy's left—but still sets himself, steadies his tremblin' knees, and goes in to kill or get killed with a grin on his chalk-white face!

You might say a guy like that don't belong in the ring. Then neither did them kinda babies belong in the trenches; neither do they belong anywheres in life! Didn't we all kinda lick our dry and tremblin' lips a little shaky like in the zero hour over there? Ain't they a mob of us which ain't beyond bitin' our nails a bit whilst waitin' for any of life's Big Crashes to come? But, Sweet Mamma, when them temperamental boys does get under way! A flash at the dope-book on any sport, profession, trade, gift, art, science, or bad habit will show you what happens then!

I made one of them guys heavyweight champion of the world—how 'bout that?

After Kid Roberts had won his first professional fight by knockin' out Young Du Fresne in Sandusky, we have to lay aside the gloves for a spell on account of the Kid havin' busted them small bones in his left hand. Some weeks after that quarrel the Kid comes up one mornin' to our mutual room in the worst hotel in Sandusky, which is the equivalent to sayin' the worst hotel in the world. He holds up his invalid hand.

"All healed," he says, wavin' it at me. "I'm ready to box again. Pack up your stuff, we're going to New York!"

I walked over and examined his paw with the greatest of care. It still looked swollen and ugly to me.

"Better give it another week to set, Kid," I says, "If you bust it again, it's liable to tie us up for a

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 coupla months, and the bank roll's punch drunk already. Why, I'd gamble you couldn't hit hard enough with that left right now to crack a vacant eggshell!"

The Kid presents me with a pleasant grin and commences lookin' around the room. Over in the corner is a long board which with a iron I have borreyed from our genial landlord for the sensational purpose of pressin' my suit. Still grinnin', the Kid picks it up, leans it at a angle against the wall, grabs a towel from the washstand, and makes a coupla turns of it around his left hand. Before I can jump across the room and grab him he has stood off and split that board in two with a punch!

"Now," he remarks, tossin' the towel on the bed and reachin' underneath for his suit case, "we have that all settled! You hustle down to the depot and find out what's the next train for New York. You might as well get the tickets and sleepers while you're there too."

"With what?" I asks, makin' him a gift of a sarcastical smile.

He swings around and looks at me kinda puzzled. "Why—ah—we have something like a hundred dollars, haven't we?" he says.

"Somethin' like it, sure!" I agrees, reachin' in a pocket and pullin' out a bill. "Here's us!" I says, showin' it to him. "This is somethin' like a hundred berries, only it's unfortunately got a ten on it in the corners instead of a hundred. Still, as you say, it's somethin '  like a hundred—same color, same size, same—"

"Where's all the money you had last night when

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 you went down to pay our hotel bill?" he demands, shuttin' me off with a glare.

"Well," I says, "it's like this: I run into a bevy of traveling salesmen in the lobby, and one word led to the other. If I'd only had brains enough to quit at two this a. m., I'd of been three hundred men to the good, but that last baby shook a nasty pair of dice!"

Kid Roberts drops his suit case and sinks down on the bed, first havin' the foresight to hurl both pillows and the busted ironin' board at me.

"And the funny part of it is," I goes on, duckin' the above utensils and cheerfully lightin' a cigarette, "I forgot to pay the hotel bill!"

"Oh, that's the funny part, eh?" he snarls, gettin' up and approachin' me with a three-alarm fire in each eye. "Well, I'm going to pound you into a jelly—see if you can get a laugh out of that!"

"Behave!" I says, slidin' gracefully back of the bureau. "Don't let's get silly and partake of vulgar fistycuffs. If I didn't know you could take me, I wouldn't be managing you; but maulin' me will get neither of us nowheres. I got in that African golf tourney because I thought I could grab off enough doubloons to take us into New York right. The breaks went against me and them guys gypped me and made me lose it—that's all! Ain't you ever did nothin' foolish?"

He stops short and scowls at me for a minute, and then all of a sudden his exceedin'ly handsome face clears and that good-natured kid grin of his makes me acquainted with all his lovely white teeth.

"You're right, old man!" he laughs, slappin' me on

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 the back. "I—I beg your pardon for losing my temper. I'm so infernally anxious to get back to New York that I— Oh, hang it, man—I've simply got to be there by the end of the week!"

He walks over to the window and stares out at Sandusky, tappin' a nervous foot on the floor and bitin' his lip. I stretched out comfortably on the so-called bed and give forth the impression that I was readin' the mornin' paper. In the reality I was watchin' him. I liked that kid—you couldn't help it! He got closer to me in the time we punched, argued, stalled, and lucked our way into a world's championship than any fighter I ever had in my stable. Big, clean, and as pleasin' to the eye as a sunset anywheres west of Chicago, his whole appearance fairly shrieked class! He looked as much like a prize fighter—then—as I resemble Mary Pickford, and I knew he was doin' a piece of deep thinkin' as he stood there at that window lookin' through the greasy panes out into the dirty little alley which run back of this alleged hotel. Think of the stuff that must of been gallopin' through that high-strung kid's mind. He'd been the most popular guy in his college, a kind of a tin god to the other birds which had carried him off on their shoulders from dozens of tracks and football fields. He'd run through as many pieces of eight as Captain Kidd ever seen; he'd belonged to clubs where even the waiters hadda be descended from deck hands on the Mayflower; he'd been used to evenin' clothes, soft lights, music, and the maddenin' smiles of pretty women, after 6 p. m., instead of a pair of trunks and boxin' gloves and

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 the reekin' din of a cheap fight club. He'd exchanged a suite at the Ritz with one of them trick valets to button his collar and fix his "bawth" for a scraggy hole in a twelfth-class hotel—as up against it as Rumania, and with a roughneck like me, which hardly spoke his language, for a companion. A drop, hey?

As I lamped him over the top of my paper I wondered what else he'd gave up. Was they by any chance a—

"What's the mad rush to New York for, Kid?" I yawns suddenly. "A Jane?"

He give a start like a frightened deer. He was always like that, even in the ring—a blur of flashin', quick, nervous moves. He couldn't sit down five minutes in a room. In the course of a ordinary conversation I bet he'd walk ten miles back and forth across the floor, remindin' you of a tiger in a cage at the zoo. It used to make me uneasy and restless watchin' him, on the level!

Now he lets forth a sigh and comes away from the window. Instead of answerin' my question, he stops opposite me and says: "Are you—eh—married?"

"Me?" I grins. "No—I got that bump over my right eye fallin' downstairs whilst a child." Then a sudden thought hit me like a wallop on the jaw. "Say!" I yells, jumpin' up. "You ain't thinkin' of—you ain't gonna get wed on me?"

The Kid smiles and pats my arm.

"Calm yourself," he says. "The most colossal ass in the world would hesitate at doing that without a penny to his name."

"Yeh?" I sneers. "Evidently you never seen the

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 East Side in New York! But answer me this, whilst we are on the fascinatin' subject of wedlocks. I have gave you the low down on myself from the time I seen my first rattle up to as late as last night. I ain't tryin' to jimmy into your most intimate affairs, but is they—is they a girl?"

I've seen chorus girls bitin' their tongues for hours at a time to perfect a natural blush like this big Kid pulled then. He let go my arm and pulled over a chair, sat down—a rare trick for him—and gimme the works.

The dame's name was no less than Irene Gresham, and her beloved parents had a bank roll which wouldst make Jack Rockefeller look like a public' charge. Apart from that annoyin' detail, they was headliners in this continuous vaudeville of society, indigo blooded and with a pedigree that not even a race horse could be ashamed of. Kid Roberts, or Kane Halliday, as the butlers was wonted to announce him previous to the time he hit the skids, was merely engaged to this gold mine, that's all! Now the Kid had a few blue corpuscles chasin' each other through his veins himself, and when it come to ancestors, he was no Adam, but—broke and a prize fighter—Sweet Mamma, where did he fit now!

When things was breakin' right for him, and his old man had as many chips as the rest of 'em, he had contracted to escort this charmer to the conventional altar. It was a kinda cut-and-dried arrangement, with the articles drawed up by the parents of both victims, and the Kid hadn't seen his intended lifelong sparrin' partner since he left college, on the account of her

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 bein' a habitué of Europe. She had come back the week before, and that's why the Kid was keen to flee to New York. He wanted to get the thing straight—put all the cards on the table, face up. Whether they still thought so highly of each other that nothin' short of matrimony wouldst cure 'em, he didn't know. That's exactly what he wanted to find out. All the boys and girls he used to play with when he was steppin' out thought he was a civil engineer right now somewheres out in the West, or the like, and the Kid was very naturally wonderin' what wouldst be the effect on love's young dream when the fair Irene heard he was a leather pusher.

"Well," I says, when he got it all off his chest and looked half relieved and half sorry for tellin' me, "they's only one way we can absorb enough pennies to get en route for the bustlin' little hamlet of New York, and that's for you to bounce some boloney at this fight club here. Since you knocked that Du Fresne turkey dead, you oughta be a card at the local abattoir, so if you'll amuse yourself countin' how many Smiths they is in the city directory, or the like, I'll prowl over there and see what can be done."

"Fine!" says the Kid. "Just remember that we've got to have at least one hundred dollars. I'll box anyone they can get for that!"

Two years later the Kid was gettin' about a hundred bucks a punch. What changes time does bring, as the ex-kaiser is wonted to remark!

I found the match maker for the local club heavily engaged in a conference with some of the directors.

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 The conference was on the subject of dollar-limit stud poker, and was bein' held in the back room of a liquor bazaar, this bein' in the days when it was not a felony to pass the time of day with a bartender. I waited till he win a pot with three aces, two of which he had the presence of mind to slip himself from the bottom of the deck, and then I called him out to the bar, purchased, and made known my modest wants.

"I might be able to let this tramp of yours work Friday night at the regular show," he says fin'ly. "How much sugar are you tryin' to git for him?"

"Well," I says, "solely on the account of you bein' so unusually polite and obligin', we'll take a five-hundred-buck guarantee and battle anybody you throw into the ring!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" he cackles with the greatest of sarcasm. "Try and git it! I wouldn't give five hundred bucks to stage Cain and Abel with a set of strange wildcats for a preliminary! I'll tell you what I'll do, and whether you take it or not may make some difference to the board of aldermen of Bolivia, but it'll make no difference to me. I'll slip you two hundred berries for ten frames with Special Delivery Kelly, provided that big boloney of yours stays the limit. If Kelly stops him before the fifth round, which is no doubt what'll happen, you don't git a nickel! Gimme a argument and the whole thing's off—how 'bout that?"

"We'll gamble!" I says after a minute of decidin' that for me to slam this cuckoo wouldst get me nothin', "But just as a matter of simple curiosity, without tryin' to delve into your private affairs, what's this Special Delivery Kelly gettin' outa this homicide?"

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 The match maker grunts and waggles the cigar in his mouth.

"I'll give him a pocketful of tickets for the show," he says. "And he gits a reward of four bits on everyone he sells, besides his guarantee of twenty berries, win, lose, or police—which is enough for the big tramp! You can work out in the club gym if you wanna, and lemme give you a tip—this Kelly ain't never been knocked out, and he swings a nasty right. It wouldn't surprise me the slightest particle if he stopped that baby of yours in a round!"

"Well," I says, "I'm a bettin' fool myself, and them two hundred men we're gonna get won't pay our laundry bill here. I'll lay you my end of the gate at even money that Kid Roberts knocks Special Delivery Kelly dead! Do you fade me?"

"You're faded!" he grins. "If your guy flattens Kelly—not outpoints him, remember; he's gotta knock him—you git four hundred; if he do not, you git the raspberry! Why—"

"And that's all settled," I shuts him off. "Now where can I get a flash at this Kelly person?"

He presents me with a full-toothed smile and turns back to the poker tourney.

"Go over to the Acme Boiler Works any time between eight in the mornin' and four-thirty in the afternoon," he says. "Ask anybody and they'll point out Kelly. He's knowed as Paddy over there; but the minute he gits in the ring with that meal ticket of yours, you'll both find out why they call him 'Special Delivery'!".

Whilst I was palely ruminatin' over the interestin'

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 fact that I was gonna send my kid in against a tough boiler maker named Paddy Kelly, which had likewise earned the ring titleof "Special Delivery," I happened to glance around and I seen the match maker and his boy friends lookin' after me and laughin' as if their hearts wouldst break. I give vent to a shiver and leaned over to the bartender.

"Have somethin' yourself," I says. "Ah—eh—what kind of a mauler is this guy Kelly?"

"Tough!" he says, shakin' his head from the one side to the other. "Terrible tough! He don't know nothin', but brother, he can hit like one of them pneumatical sledges, and he's a pig for chastisement. He's mingled with all the good ones, and none of 'em could do a thing with him in the regards to a knockout. They all half killed Kelly, but he was still in there swingin' with 'em at the final bell. It looks to me like that green kid of yours is scheduled for a pastin'!"

"It looks to me too!" I says, and proceeded on my way.

I drilled back to the hotel as cheerful as a yegg on his way to get sentenced, but I managed to bring forth a smile for the Kid. I told him I had grabbed a set-up for him named Kelly which called himself "Special Delivery" because he went out so quick, cleverly leavin' the slight detail that I had bet our end of the purse on a knock-out out of the conversation.

That Friday night, at the bewitchin' hour of ten, Kid Roberts climbed through the ropes at the Crescent A. C. of Sandusky, accompanied by me and

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 a dinge middleweight I had hired for two bucks to help handle him. The mob give the Kid a mild greetin', and then down the aisle, through the haze of smoke, comes what I thought at first was Washington's Monument with a bath robe on. It turned out to be nothin' less than Special Delivery Kelly, which Kid Roberts is soon gonna be versus. The second the customers piped him I thought the roof of the clubhouse was comin' off, and for all I know it did! Everybody in the joint, includin' a leather-lunged delegation of honest hearts and willin' hands from the boiler works, climbs up on their chairs and lets forth three hundred rousin' cheers for Monsieur Kelly, which said gent acknowledges by several noncommittal short bobs of his bullet head and a coupla ferocious scowls at our corner. If this cuckoo wasn't a yard over six foot, then I'm the next king of France, and his weight was announced at a triflin' 240. I heaved a sigh of relief when I heard that. I had him figured at about 940! His hair was shaved down close to the temple of knowledge on top of his neck like he had not five minutes ago completed a course in Sing Sing, and what I take it for granted was his face give him the startlin' appearance of a guy which had devoted the best part of his life to fightin' buzz saws with it. The top of one ear was elsewhere. Oh, Special Delivery Kelly was one tough-lookin' young man, I'll inform the hemispheres!

"Good Lord—what a beast!" gasps the Kid after one flash. "He looks like a gorilla!"

I says nothin', but my personal idea was that, alongside of Kelly, a gorilla would look like a chorus girl.

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 Whilst I am bandagin' the Kid's hands and my dinge helper is whisperin' sweet nothin's in his ears to take his mind off the crowd, the air is filled with shriekin' demands for Kelly to murder him. My boy is pale and nervous like as of yore, head down and both feet shufflin' restlessly back and forth in the rosin. He kept wettin' his dry lips with a shakin' tongue and tappin' the ropes with his hands, every now and then glancin' out at that ocean of sneerin' faces around him and then quickly turnin' his head away again. He was takin' a terrible lickin', and no one knew it better than me, right whilst he sat there in his corner and waited for the festivities to commence. He had nothin' on his mind but that girl Irene, his future, whether this bird wouldst mark him up or not, what wouldst happen when they all found out back home that he was a prize fighter, and, likewise, what wouldst happen when one of Special Delivery Kelly's hamlike fists bounced off his face. Yellah? You never seen him work. Once the bell rung it was all different, and that nervous energy slipped right out through his pumpin' gloves. Temperament—that's all! This big ourang outang Kelly sit sprawled out in his corner, kiddin' with friends around the ringside about the pink-cheeked dude on the other side without another care in the wide, wide world!

Fin'ly I step over to Kelly's corner to have a flash at his bandages. One look was enough! I whistled to the referee. "Why don't you give this guy a ax and be done with it?" I says, pointin' to Kelly's hands. His seconds is tryin' frantically to get the gloves on before I can crab it.

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 "What's the matter?" sneers the referee. "They let 'em use tape in Ohio. This here's supposed to be a fight, not a one-step!"

I reached down and yanked up one of Kelly's hands before he had a idea of what it was all about. "See that white dust on top of the tape?" I yells. "Well, I know plaster of Paris when I see it, fellah, and we come from New York, not Crabapple Crossin'. This baby is figurin' on buryin' his hands in the water bucket, and that plaster will harden up in a minute till it'll be the same as if Kelly had a rock in each hand. Take 'em off or we don't fight!"

"Strip them bandages!" growls the referee to Kelly's handlers. "We got a dumb-bell from the State Boxin' Commission out in front." He wheels and glares at me. "That ain't gonna git you nothin', wise guy," he grunts. "Kelly'll make that ham of yours jump over the ropes!"

A fine, fair-minded referee, hey?

The announcer steps to the center of the ring and holds up his hand, immediately causin' the well-known deathly silence to fall upon the house except for such hot-blooded admirers of the manly art which can't control themselves now that the red slaughter is actually about to commence.

"Final star bout of the evenin'!" bawls this guy. "Ten-round exhibition—" he turns and points to our corner—"over here, Kid—"

"Kelly first! Kelly first!" roars the mob, dancin' up and down.

The Kid was half-way up from his stool. He give a short, jerky laugh and sit down again.

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 "Over here"—goes on the announcer, waggin' a finger at the other corner—"over here, Sandusky's favorite Irish-American heavyweight, which always gives the best they is in him—Special Delivery Kelly!"

Sweet Mamma!

They bang the chairs on the floor, hurl their hats in the air, shriek, whistle, pound their feet up and down, and seven guys gets hysterical and embraces each other.

The announcer favors us with a sympathetic grin.

"Over here," he says, noddin' to the Kid, "New York's promisin' young contender for the heavyweight champeenship—Kid Roberts!"

A few scattered handclaps for us.

I whisk the bath robe off the Kid, knead his stomach, and rub his eyes, whilst the dinge wiped him dry and kept whisperin': "Don't let him stall you, white boy—'at Special Delivery thing don't mean nuffin'!" Then he starts snappin' his fingers over to Kelly's corner. "We spots you fifty pounds and we takes you!" he shouts. "Was punches dollars you'll be Vanderbilt inside of one second! Ah shoots ten dollars we knocks you daid! Ah—"

The bell cuts him off, and we jump down under the ropes.

"Get this guy, Kid, and get him quick!" was my final instructions to the Kid as with a slap on the shoulder I turned him loose.

The thing hadn't gone a minute when I seen that Special Delivery Kelly's only idea was to stay the limit. The Kid, all the nervousness gone now that he was in there workin', felt his man out a bit and then proceeded to beat him from pillar to post—it wasn't no fight, it

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 was murder in the first degree! Roberts tried hard to connect with a solid smash that would end it, but Kelly was the wildest thing I ever seen this side of Borneo, and when he wasn't reclinin' on the mat he was divin' head first into a clinch and roughin' my boy with that extry forty-odd pounds of bone and muscle. The referee give him all the chance in the world to hang on, scrape the Kid's back against the ropes, and wrestle him. That and the generous counts he got durin' the four times he kissed the canvas was the only things which saved Kelly from goin' to bed in round one.

The Kid ran grinnin' to his corner at the bell with his golden blond hair scarcely mussed. The house was in a uproar. "That fellow's sheer strength is remarkable, but he's not a boxer!" says Roberts to me. "I'll end it in the next round—I'm not going to punish him any more."

But he had to do it—much!

Kelly came slowly out for the second round, a pitiful sight. The Kid had chopped him to pieces in the first three minutes, and his hairy body was stained a deep crimson down to his trunks. Suddenly he rushed viciously, landin' a right and left to the body that sent Roberts crashin' into the ropes gaspin' and drove the mob insane. As Kelly lumbered in close to finish him, the Kid caught him with a left uppercut to the heart that could be plainly heard in Siam, the lightin' right cross to the jaw that followed sprawlin' Kelly on the lower rope. He was up at "six," pawin' blindly in the air, but carryin' on smartly, and the Kid coolly circled around him, his flashin' left forever in Kelly's battered face. Three times more Special Delivery Kelly dived

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 to the mat, and each time he staggered to his feet spatterin' gore on the reporters, with the crowd a pack of maniacs. Right before the bell the Kid turns to the referee and asks him to stop it, but that guy shakes his head and motions him to go on. With a dyin' flurry Kelly rushed again, drivin' a jarrin' right swing to the head, but the Kid drove him back on his heels with a beautifully timed left hook, and as Kelly bounced off the ropes Roberts put both hands to the face, dumpin' him on his back in his corner as cold as a Eskimo's front yard. The kind-hearted referee took plenty of time with the count so's to give Kelly a chance to get up and take some more, but the bell at "nine" saved him. His handlers hadda lift him up, drag him to his stool, and hold him straight on it, still peacefully slumberin'.

When the Kid come to his corner I started to slap him on the back and shake his glove, but he waved me off.

"I'm through!" he pants. "I'm not going in there and hit that poor devil any longer. This isn't a contest; it's wanton brutality! That fellow hasn't a chance with me, and he's been punished enough. Get me someone else and I'll box him the rest of the ten rounds so we'll get our money, or have the referee stop this thing I'm not a murderer!"

"He'll never be able to answer the next bell," I says soothin'ly. "He's as dead as Napoleon right now. You just step to the middle of the ring at the gong and we cop!"

I slipped down under the ropes and shoved my way through the howlin' mob on the en route to the box

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 office to collect our four hundred fish. Two hundred wages and two hundred I win from the jovial match maker on a knockout. As I get to Kelly's corner they is about a dozen guys workin' over him, one of which is no less than my old pal, the match maker himself. He's givin' Kelly's manager a terrible bawlin' out and jabbin' a bottle of ammonia up under what's left of Kelly's nose. Kelly is layin' back against the ropes, both eyes closed—one of which the Kid attended to—dead to the world.

"Pay me!" I hollers at the match maker.

"Not yet, you fathead!" he snarls with a odd look, and then I see they have got one of Kelly's gloves off. In a flash the genial match maker pulls a penknife from his pocket, rips open a blade, and shoves the point up under the quick of Kelly's thumbnail. Kelly jumps half-ways off the chair with a yell of pain, and the crowd goes batty again. The lion-hearted iron man is comin' back! A nice, clean sport, hey?

When the gong clanged for the third session I had to fairly throw Kid Roberts into the center of the ring. He was sick of slaughterin' this baby, but the watchin' mob figured he was gettin' faint-hearted, and they yell for Kelly to let him fall. Roberts shakes his head disgustedly and ties into this totterin', half-blind wreck with the idea of gettin' it over as quick as possible. He forces Kelly to lead and takes a light left to the face; then he sets himself and floors the boiler maker with a long right swing. Up bounces this unhuman cave man only to crash down again from a volley of lefts and rights to the body. This time he took "nine" before

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 arisin' and collapsin' over the ropes, both hands hangin' useless at his side. They is some yells to "Stop it!" but the referee slaps the Kid on the back and hollers: "Go on, fight, or I'll disqualify you—you big dough-hearted tramp!" The Kid shoulders him away, hesitates a minute, and a sponge comes hurtlin' into the ring at Kelly's feet. The fightin' boiler maker's one good eye observes it with a trace of annoyance, and with his last remainin' strength he kicks the sponge outa the ring and paws feebly in the general direction of the Kid. Roberts stepped back and made no attempt to hit him, and then Kelly's handlers swarm in and drag their man to his corner, where he flops like a sack of wheat, mumblin' that he never felt better and still weakly strugglin' to stand up and scrap.

The roarin' crowd mills into the ring, and the Kid walks over to Kelly's corner, shakes his hand, and tells him he's the gamest man he ever saw with a pair of boxin' gloves on. Kelly shoves a coupla handlers away and sticks up his pulpy face. "Yer a dom good man," he grunts, the one workin' eye glarin' at each and all, "but I'd have licked ye in another round. Ye niver would have stopped Paddy Kelly! I've taken mannys the worse batin' thin I got to-night," he adds proudly. "Why Young Horgan bruk three of me ribs and divvil a count I tuk!" He suddenly peers over the ropes. "Where's that blackguard which manages me and brung down on me head the disgrace of havin' a foight stopped that a Kelly was in?" he roars.

Special Delivery Kelly's pilot pushes forward, kinda nervous. "Tough luck, Paddy," he mutters. "But we

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 them he saw that they were not; for they reached only to the gold clasp in his instep. They were kind and courteous and they spoke Irish, but they looked up and wondered. He questioned them about Finn and Oscar and the rest.

'We have heard of Finn,' they said. 'He was a wise and generous king in Ireland once upon a time. The poets tell of him and his companions. There were great men in those days and the Fena were great amongst them. The poets sing of them. Finn, they say, is dead long ago, and his brothers and sons and grandsons and companions are all dead. They were great men, heroes taller than we, every one of them as tall as yourself, but they are all dead of their wounds. All except one, as the poets say. He was one of the sons of Finn named Ossian. He left his father and all that company to go with a maiden to Tirnanoge. He said that he would come back, but he never did. They sought him, but before they could find him they were dead. But for the poets they would be forgotten…'

'Poets?' said Ossian, in sorrow and in anger. 'What poets can there be if Fergus be dead and Ossian in Tirnanoge?'

His heart was too heavy to be long angry with these little images of men. He turned away his horse and rode on to the well-known places of battle and hunt and feast. Finn's palace was the home of winds and birds above, of chickweeds and nettles below. The cooking places of the Fena still scarred the high moors, but the heroes were gone. No men had seen them. They could only show him writings containing the names of Finn, Ossian, Fergus, Oscar, Gaul, Dermat, and the rest. Wherever he went he heard about these poems instead of the champions. Men stared at him, but none


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 can't finish in front all the time! Brace up now, you'll be all right in a coupla days, and—"

"All right, is ut?" bawls Kelly, pullin' himself to his feet by the ropes. "And did ye iver see a Kelly that wasn't all roight?"

"You tell 'em!" grins the manager, still a trifle uneasy. "Now—"

"Shut up, ye divilish banshee!" howls Kelly. Twas you that stopped the foight, they tell me."

"Yes," mumbles the manager, backin' away. "I stopped it so—"

"Stop this, thin!" yells Special Delivery Kelly, and lets go with all he had left on that baby's jaw!

That Kelly was tough, hey?

Well, after payin' off hithers and you in Sandusky, and gettin' fitted for a set of tickets to N. Y., I have a even hundred and twenty-five berries left of the four hundred we accumulated from the extermination of Monsieur Kelly. I divided this with the Kid, givin' him the twenty-five, and the minute we have hired parkin' space for ourselves at a Manhattan hotel he disappears. I hunted for him all afternoon, but he might as well of been vice president, because nobody had laid a eye on him or heard anything about him.

In the midst of my search I run into a billiard palace which is a hangout of mine when I am in this burg which electric lights made famous. It is called a billiard palace for the reason that billiards is about the only thing which ain't played there. I play a race at Havana and do myself $250 worth of good, and then I sidle on to the rear, where a exhibition of the gallopin' dominoes, or, to get technical, a crap game, is bein' had. In

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 two hours I have ran the $250 up to $900, and in five hours I ain't got a nickel, and, in the addition to this, I have lost my watch. I tried to borrey $20 on my contract with Kid Roberts and was laughed outa the joint. I have raised $10,000 on that same scrap of paper, since.

How the so ever, when I fin'ly get back to our inn, the Kid is sittin' on the bed waitin' for me. When he ain't been walkin' the floor he's been playin' solitaire—a combination that drives some guys crazy and makes others sane. I asked him did he see his girl friend, and he says on the contrary, but he had the boon of a long interview with her male parent on that identical subject, and it looked like the bottom had fell outa his stock as a comin' son-in-law. The old man thought the Kid was a très bien guy, and he was sorry his father had been careless enough to go broke, but, as the French says, what would you? Perhaps, if they waited 100 years, it wouldst be all different. Maybe by then the Kid would have some standin' as a civil engineer and his father wouldst likewise have dug up another roll somewheres, but right now—well, you got the rest of it, hey?

The Kid had carefully neglected to mention that he had turned into a leather pusher. He wanted to see how the sight of this Jane affected him before the show-down.

The show-down come quicker than either of us expected it!

The next mornin' I get the information that no less than Dummy Carney is in New York yellin' murder

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 about me havin' the Kid now that Roberts looked like a comer. Well, as I remarked before, we are paupers again, so I figured on diggin' up Dummy and sellin' him a piece of the Kid's contract for enough to room and board us till we got a fight. That night Kid Roberts was gonna rent a set of evenin' clothes and find out from Miss Irene Gresham how the course of true love was rannin', if at all, and I was gonna do the same with Dummy Carney, without the evenin' clothes.

Then things happened very fast!

I insisted on the Kid doin' a little road work that mornin', both to ease his nerves a bit and also to keep him conditioned in case we got a chance to fill in over in Jersey that week. We are runnin' through Central Park—the Kid with that long, easy stride which brung home the lovin' cups and the etc at college, and me puffin' along in the rear with the pantin' gait which come from the years I have dallied with the other cups. Along around Eighty-sixth Street they is a auto worth a steamfitter's ransom stuck at one side of the road, and a gayly bedecked chauffeur is changin' a tire. As we slow down to get around it, Kid Roberts stops suddenly and goes white.

"Irene!" he kinda gasps.

As my name has at no time been Irene I look around inquiringly and gaze upon a strange and interestin' sight.

They is a Jane sittin' in the back of that car, and she is regardin' Kid Roberts with a mixture of about thirty-eight different expressions, of which contempt is away in the lead. She's a beaucoup looker all right, but beautiful the same way them marble statues is

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 perfect and cold. The Kid is standin' there goin' red and white by turns under this silent inspection which seems to have tied his tongue up too. He had on a ragged cap, a torn and form'ly white sweater, a old, dirty pair of courduroy pants, and a pair of runnin' shoes. The lady fair's icy, glitterin' eyes takes in every detail of that outfit, and she gets further below zero with each second. One of the Kid's eyes has a little mouse under it and his left cheek bone is hid by a strip of court plaster, the result of Special Delivery Kelly's dyin' efforts. A split lip ain't had a fair chance to heal yet, and by the time this girl's gaze reached the Kid's face it was so cold I shivered where I was standin'. The Kid fin'ly pulls himself together and seems to be gulpin' out somethin', and I step away so's I won't get my ears in where they don't belong. As I do somebody slaps me on the back and snarls: "I been lookin' all over for you, you rat! You're a fine guy, you are—what d'ye mean by stealin' my fighter from me, hey?"

Dummy Carney's purplin' face is shoved over my shoulder at the auto.

"Oh, there's the big bum, hey?" he growls, and, throwin' my hands off, he walks up to the Kid and the girl. The chauffeur has changed the shoe and he looks up kinda puzzled. Kid Roberts gets a coupla shades whiter when he sees Dummy and tries to motion him away. But it's too late.

"You big stiff!" roars Carney. "You fight another guy for anybody but me and I'll run you outa New York! Foolin' around with a skirt, hey, instead of lookin' me up and—"

The sudden rush of blood was still dyein' the Kid's

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 face as he clipped Dummy, and that baby kissed the turf without a groan.

"Beast!" says the girl—the only word I ever heard her say. She motions to the chauffeur. Exit Miss Irene Gresham from the life and adventures of Kid Roberts!

With his cap in his hand and his head throwed back, the Kid stands starin' after the car. Then he snaps his fingers with a short, queer laugh and turns to me a white, strained face, which seems to have picked up five years somewheres since I seen it last.

"And there's that!" he says. "Let's get away from here!"

Carney begins showin' some signs of life, and the Kid stops a passin' taxi, tells the brigand the hotel, jumps in, and pulls me after him.

"Hey," I whispers to him, "I ain't got a nickel, and it'll cost at least two bucks to get to the hotel."

"There's every penny I have!" snarls the Kid, pullin' out a two-dollar bill and tossin' it tome. "Pay it. Now shut up and let me alone!"

From then on that baby was different. I don't know just what the change was—he was just another guy, that's all! No more did he shed a tear over bein' forced to clout the stiffs; he showed about as much mercy as the gentle Germans showed Belgium.

They is a little package and a note for the Kid when we get to the hotel, and up in the room he opens it, reads the note, and tears it up.

"There goes the last link that held me to what used to be!" he remarks, tossin' the pieces out the window.

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 "I only wish we had some kinda links to hock!" I says. "Do you realize we ain't got the price of a rebuilt toothpick?"

Instead of answerin', he hands the little box over to me.

"Look at that," he says. "It represents the end of another illusion!"

I opened it and was nearly struck blind by the diamondst diamond I ever seen in my life.

"Sweet Mamma!" I breathes. "Who give you this, Kid?"

"The young lady we met in the park," he says. "I am now free to pursue my heinous career without any qualms. That—er—was an engagement ring. When I bought that my father was worth a fortune, and I paid eleven hundred dollars for it. I'm glad—in a way—this happened. It was the easiest way out of a thing that would have been a horrible mistake!"

"Well," I says, gazin' at the ring in a trance, "she might of at least—"

"Not a word!" he warns me, holdin' up his hand. "She is a splendid woman—a sweet girl!"

I grabbed for my hat and held up the ring.

"And this here's the sweetest thing she ever done!" I says. "Wait here and we'll eat. I'll try and get five hundred on it!"

I was goin' down in the elevator before he reached the door.

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it comes to takin' punishment I am forced to award the brown derby to the modern prize-fight fan. Next to the wrestlin' addict, the gent which digs into the rent money for a ringside seat at the average one of these "return engagements" between the present crop of professional sluggers stands alone as the Crown Prince of dumb-bells. For the example, one of our present champs has "fought" the nearest contender for his crown a even thirteen times, with first one and vhen the other winnin' the newspaper decision, mixin' in a occasional "draw" to keep up the interest. Another title holder has met the ex-champ in his class eight times in them brief, chummy, "no decision" things, and as for the secondand third-rate heavies—Sweet Mamma! Them guys has a regular route mapped out for their act, with a season which would make a standard vaudeville team sob with envy. Why, girls, it's nothin' at all for a pair of 'em to box each other a coupla times a week on a trip around a circuit that extends from Maine to California, takin' turns in winnin' by a "shade."

A sparrin' partner which has got anything at all conuected with his head outside of a tin ear, soon learns to

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