THE GREAT GAME

When Dick Donovan was about seven he had a novel experience. One of the boys in the street called him an “orphin” and jeered him because he had no father, and when he clambered up all the stairs to the seventh floor and asked his mother what an “orphin” was, she said:

“Your father was a pólisman (may God be good to his sowl!) and was killed fallin’ into a ship’s hould wan slippery marnin’ on the docks.”

Soon after this Dick was packed off to the primary school, but as his playmates were going too that did not make much difference to him. He was naturally quick, and had a good memory.

Bit by bit in the next two or three years his mother’s tears and complainings told him that they were going down in life. She often got very little washing to do, and sometimes she was too ill to do it. Dick had to carry the washing to the various houses and bring home the money, and soon grew an adept at getting small coins on his own account. He knew every cent in a dollar better even than his prayers.

He got through the primary school at about thirteen, and though his mother was ill she insisted that he should go on to the high school, which Dick thought mere waste of time and energy.

A little later when she was coughing worse than usual Bill Butler came to see them. Bill was a big longshoreman, a friend of the boy’s father, and he offered to get Dick a job under Long Dan O’Connor, the head of the longshoremen, to run errands and do light jobs at Pier No. 9.

Mrs. Donovan protested feebly: “The boy must get his schoolin’”; but Butler insisted that he was growing quite a man and “the very spit of his father,” and Dick, seduced by being called a man, begged that the proposal might be accepted, so that he could earn four dollars a week and have done with that beastly old school.

The next day, in charge of Bill Butler, he went down to the docks and began what he always regarded as his adult life. He was just thirteen.

Every day for the next four years Dick worked at the docks—ran errands, did whatever they told him to do—and at the end of that time was proud to bring home his eight dollars a week, that kept the house going.

As Dick’s earnings grew larger Mrs. Donovan’s health improved, and when he reached eight dollars a week she kept her room far better than Mrs. Rubin kept hers.

The Rubins were wops from near Trieste who had just moved into the next room and shared it with another Jewish family. Mrs. Donovan did not like them. She thought it wasn’t “dacint” for two families both with boys and girls growing up to be living in one room with only a chalk line on the floor to divide them.

But Dick thought Maggie Rubin the prettiest girl he had ever seen, with her black eyes and hair and her air of disdainful self-possession.

When Dick got to know them the Rubins were dreadfully poor and seemed likely never to be richer. In the summer Mr. Rubin got a living out of his push-cart with fruits and ice-cream, but in winter his earnings fell away to almost nothing. His wife did her best to keep the house going, but there was something reckless and extravagant about her. Some said she was a gipsy, and it may well have been true, for Dave, her son, was tameless as a hawk, and even as a lad took to gambling and bad company, and Maggie never could resist pleasure, though her mother was always preaching to her the necessity of getting rich.

“Take warning by me,” she used to sigh. “It is just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one, and oh! the difference afterwards.” Maggie’s school chums all taught the same gospel.

Maggie liked Dick, for she saw that he admired her, and he was tall and had fine grey-blue eyes and worked hard and—she just liked him.

Then came a bitter winter and on top of that the great strike. The longshoremen, led by Bill Butler, would not accept a cut in wages and Dick was out of a job. His mother looked very grave when he told her the news, but determined to make the best of it. For a long dreadful week, Dick was at a loose end, and for the first time in his life a prey to absolute fear. He could earn something; he could get wood enough from the houses that were being torn down and rebuilt and coal enough too from the docks to keep a fire going and the room warm, but he was out one whole day without earning ten cents, and no two people can live on ten cents a day in New York.

Dick’s next discovery was that his mother loved to deny herself, but when he found her eating potatoes for the second meal and giving him the meat he couldn’t stand it.

“I don’t want the mate,” she said when he reproached her, “and me doin’ nothin’.”

“Then I won’t eat it either,” Dick replied, and forced her to take her share.

After this Dick went out determined to get work somehow or other, and the first person he struck was Dave Rubin.

Rubin was full of resources and knew New York like his pocket. After talking a few minutes he told Dick that he could get him a place in Heenan’s saloon on Maple Street where, after a week or so, he would get five dollars a night for boxing and an extra buck slipped to him besides if a gentleman drew blood or knocked him down.

With his mother’s economies pinching his heart Dick jumped at the chance.

“Take me along,” he said; “sure they won’t kill me anyway.” And that night, being Wednesday, Dave kept his word and about eight o’clock presented Dick to Heenan’s partner, Ricker.

“If he can’t box,” said this worthy, “take him to the boys and let him put the gloves on at once. I am afraid he is too young and lathy to be much good.”

Dick found that at Heenan’s there were two large rooms on the ground floor flanking the bar-room: one was kept for serious matches and bouts; it had a twenty-four foot ring roped off all complete; the other was where the boys boxed and talked and drank and smoked like men—up to any devilry.

Dick was inclined to be shy and quiet, but Dave was evidently free of the place in the widest sense of the word. The two boys who had been boxing when they came in broke off for a moment of introductions, but were soon at it again hammer and tongs. Dick’s eyes grew wide in admiration of their skill. He confided as much to Dave, but Dave thrust out contemptuous lips:

“You ought to beat them both at the end of your first week,” he said; “they are only beginners.”

Dick’s eyes widened still further. He thought them both wonderful, though rather small.

Suddenly Ricker broke off the contest: “Go down and bring me a drink,” he said to one lad, “and you, Jones, come here and put on the gloves with this dub.”

In a twinkling, under Dave’s orders, Dick slipped off his coat and vest, drew his belt tighter round his middle and put on the gloves for the first time in his life with Ed Jones, an undersized youth of twenty or so who had already passed out of the feather-weight class.

As soon as he saw that Dick was a complete novice Jones seemed to take pleasure in telling him how to hit and how to guard, and from the first Dick took to the new sport with enthusiasm. True, Jones showed him more than once that he could hit faster and harder than Dick had any idea of, but he had learned his first lesson of life on the docks, and he took the hard blows with the light ones without showing any pain, and at the end of ten minutes or so he began divining the heavier blows, either guarding or getting his head out of the way of them. Ricker’s final “green as grass” only made him resolve to do better. Dave told him it was a rather good sign, for after all Ricker had stood by to see him begin.

As Ricker left the room Dave went with him, and when he came back seemed rather anxious. “I’ll put on the gloves with you,” he said, “and give you a lesson or two.” And then he began to show Dick how to hit quick by throwing his fist, and how to guard and slip blows, and kept on with him for nearly an hour, till Dick was wet with sweat and began to get slow.

“You’re tired,” said Dave suddenly. “You’ll have to begin again to-morrow.”

He confided to Dick on his way home that he had to beg Ricker a little and promise to come himself one night because Ricker said that Dick would need more than a month’s practice to get into the boxing enough to be any good to the house.

Of course Dick was full of his evening and wanted to talk of it, and by chance they met Maggie with a man in the hallway and out it all came.

Maggie was interested, but she told him that he mustn’t get thick ears or have that nice nose of his broken. Dave assured her that Dick showed signs of being very quick. “He has a long reach,” he said. “I shouldn’t be surprised if he does things; he is quicker than he looks.”

Dick glowed with pleasure and went up to tell his mother all about it. But Mrs. Donovan wouldn’t hear of fighting as a profession. “All thim fighters,” she said, “get dhrunk and look fierce. Sure, we can wait a wake or two till ye get honest work.”

But Dick knew better—knew that there was no time to lose; that already the portions of meat at supper had grown small and stringy. So he just resolved to keep his own counsel and do his very best; and, boylike, he lay awake a long time thinking of how he could strike and get his head out of the way, because Dave had rocked him once with an uppercut that hurt.

Now began for Dick a wondertime. By nine o’clock next morning he was at Heenan’s, made his way to the back room and went over to Ed Jones, who happened to be talking with two other boys.

“Feel stiff?” asked Jones.

“No,” replied Dick, “but I had a bit of a headache last night.”

“That will wear off,” said Jones. “Do you want to put them on again?”

“Sure,” said Dick. And in two minutes they were hard at it; and after Jones he took on another boy, and a little later another.

Dick was toughened by hard and constant work, but he soon found that there is no taskmaster so exacting as one’s own desire. He boxed that day till he ached from head to foot, and yet when newcomers came in and wanted a round or two he was always willing to put on the gloves and try to learn something new.

At noon he went out and got a sandwich, and when he came back he was so tired that he fell asleep and slept through all the hubbub till nearly four o’clock. Then he got on the job again and soon found out that it was better to slip blows than ward them off, for by slipping them he had both hands free to hit with.

That very first day Dick began training his head to slip to one side or the other, and soon his head began to guard itself by getting out of the way automatically.

There was no dreaming and wondering for him that night. As soon as his head touched the pillow he fell asleep.

The days passed in a whirl till Sunday, when Dick was so tired that he slept right on till past noon, exhausted nature taking its revenge. He had a little chat about two o’clock with Maggie, who told him that Dave had made five hundred dollars on horses; then he went out for a walk right up to the park and fell asleep on the grass. But on Monday he was at work before nine o’clock and as keen as ever. To his delight he found that he had improved out of all recognition. The rest had enabled him to realise his knowledge.

The first boy he boxed with was a feather-weight called Jack Geary, and he found that he could nearly hold his own, and after the bout was over he got an approving nod and a word of good advice from Ricker.

“Don’t mix it, you boob,” said Ricker, “when he is short and strong. Keep him out. Use the length of your arms.”

It was true, Dick felt, and he put the tip into practice. When Ed Jones boxed with him that afternoon he was astonished at his progress. “You will make some fighter,” he said, “if you keep on. When a man tries to come in remember he’s as likely to come round your left arm as inside it, so always be ready with your right fist.”

That day brought Dick several new lessons and he profited by them. He was soon well liked by most of the fellows in the place because he was always willing to box with any of them, and in fact he did more work in the next week than all of them put together.

One day Mr. Ricker brought a gentleman in and Dick soon discovered that he was twice as quick and could play with him; but after the first round Ricker drew him aside. “You don’t want to hit him,” he said, “you want him to hit you. If he knocks you down he will pay. Tell him he is hitting so hard that it hurts. They love to hear them things.”

Dick went home that night with six dollars, which hugely increased his zeal, though his mother was not satisfied till she had daubed all his face with arnica.

In a month Dick was one of the regular boys, willing to mix it with anyone and not likely to come to much injury, while his pay had risen to be twelve or fifteen dollars a week.

One day Ed Jones asked him if he would go over to Philadelphia with him. There was a house there where they were giving ten and twenty dollars a night, and Ed thought they would have no trouble in coming back with a hundred dollars or even two for a week’s work. “I want the dough,” said Jones; “my girl wants to doll up all the time and that takes coin in New York.”

They went to Philadelphia, but in spite of Ed’s coaching Dick had a very unpleasant experience.

After two or three fairly light bouts he was matched to box Harry Wilkins for two hundred and fifty dollars, a gold watch, and the feather-weight championship of Pennsylvania for boys under eighteen years of age. The promoters had advertised the match very cleverly; the feather-weight championship under eighteen limited the competition to a very small number, and it was told to the boys that the prize was really one hundred dollars, and a gold watch worth one hundred and fifty dollars, which an enterprising firm of watchmakers had supplied for the advertisement.

Dick had never seen his opponent till he entered the ring at Oddfellows’ Hall at nine o’clock that night, but from the thundering applause that greeted Wilkins when he appeared there could be no doubt that he was a popular favorite.

Dick measured his adversary with a glance and thought he might be a tough customer, and Ed at once advised caution: “He’s quick and strong and the old hands all say that he’s full of tricks, so take care.”

At first the lads felt each other out cautiously, but almost at once Dick’s long stabbing left hand seemed to disconcert his opponent, and Dick began to hope for an easy victory. Ever afterwards he laid one proverb to heart: “Easy beginnings often have hard endings.” Very early he noticed that Wilkins was clever in dodging with his head, and in the third round he only just stopped him from getting to close quarters by a half-arm jolt with his right and a lightning step back. Still Dick was very confident from the beginning that he could win, and win easily.

This confidence in prize-fighters is often misjudged by the outside public. The truth is that fighting men are trained so severely that they enter the ring in the very pink of physical condition. They feel so well, so strong and lithesome that they can’t imagine defeat. A boy of one hundred and ten pounds feels that he could fight Samson or Goliath—that no blow could hurt him; it’s only long experience teaches him that his confidence is the mere conceit of perfect health.

The fourth and fifth rounds both went to Dick, though he remarked that his opponent managed to slip or guard all his really heavy blows and the light ones didn’t seem to make much impression on him.

At the sixth round Dick stepped toward mid-ring with the resolve to get home with at least one heavy blow. With this in mind he put more weight than usual into his left leads, and Wilkins shook his head over one as if dazed; at once Dick followed it up with a hot left and right. Both missed by an inch or so and Dick’s own impetus brought him into a clinch.

“Break away there, break away,” warned the referee, stepping forward; but before the two could be separated Wilkins had screwed himself round Dick and given him a half-arm punch in the side and small of the back. In a moment they were parted, but the “kidney punch” had gone home and Dick began to feel sick and weak, as if all the vitality had been suddenly drained out of him.

“Spar with him, keep him away, side-step him,” called Jones in a frenzy of fear, and Dick did his best to follow the advice, but he had all he could do to evade his adversary, and never in his life did he find a round so long. When he got back to his corner Ed was very helpful; he rubbed the sore spot gently, gave Dick a mouthful or two of brandy and assured him that if he could only keep up the defensive for two or three more rounds he might yet win.

Dick did all he knew. Bit by bit the faint, sick feeling vanished and he felt the constant stabbing with his left was again beginning to tell; but for the life of him he couldn’t put vim enough into his work to win the fight. Still his pluck gained him a good many friends who knew nothing of the foul blow, and when the fight was proclaimed a draw, and the purse divided, Dick was glad to take the gold watch as his reward, though its real value was probably less than the one hundred dollars which fell to Wilkins.

That fight taught Dick a painful lesson in the importance of caution and humility.

When he returned to New York after a couple of weeks he had cleared one hundred and twenty-five dollars in cash, and as luck would have it found his mother out shopping, so he knocked at the Rubins’ door.

Maggie was crying and Dick was delighted to caress and make up to her. What was the matter?

“Dave has lost all his money,” she said, and to console her Dick slipped her the extra twenty-five dollars he had made. She threw her arms around his neck of her own accord and gave him a long, long kiss on the mouth that awakened all his senses.

That night a surprise was awaiting him at Heenan’s. For the first time he saw Zu Lenward, the bantam-weight champion, box with three or four of the boys, and was astonished at his footwork. He not only got his head out of the way, but his body as well. Dick had begun to find out that a punch in the wind, as they called the pit of the stomach, was even more unpleasant than a jolt to the jaw. Then, too, when Lenward struck the weight of the blow came from his hip and back as well as from his arm. Dick saw at once that Lenward could beat Jones because of fast footwork, and he got still another lesson.

At about ten o’clock Mr. Ricker brought in a funny little old man, introduced him as Patsy M’Gee, and said he would have to keep order, because it appeared there had been a good deal of drunkenness and free fighting the night before.

At the idea of Patsy keeping order Dick laughed, for in truth he was a comical figure. His head was almost over his left shoulder and the left side of his face was all wrinkled up. Dick made some such remark to Jones about him, but was astonished at his reply.

“A light-weight champion once,” said Ed, “but he was knocked out badly later and got a paralytic stroke; very useful with both hands and a rushin’ infighter, like them Irish usually are.”

In a short time Dick and Patsy became firm friends. Perhaps because the boy was Irish, Patsy was never tired of teaching him and giving him advice.

One day, during a prolonged bout with Jack Geary, who was going to fight for the feather-weight championship, Patsy took Dick in hand: “Keep him out,” he said; “use your long arms. If he comes in stop him or side-step him; but try to keep him out. In two or three rounds he will be shaken; you will have knocked all the pep out of him. Use your natural advantage, boy. You have extraordinarily long arms; use them.”

And after the bout nothing would do but Dick must stretch out his arms to their full length and have them measured. “Sure,” affirmed Patsy, “what did I tell ye? Instead of seventy inches, stretch you have seventy-five inches. Arms two or three inches longer than anyone of your weight in New York.”

After a week of Patsy’s training Dick passed into the championship class. He was already making twenty-five and fifty dollars a week, and his mother began talking about a house at Mamaroneck which she had once seen on a Sunday trip with her husband.

“We could get the whole house and garden,” she said, “for a couple of thousand dollars, and I could keep chickens and a pig and make ye more comfortable. Ye don’t need to be up early to get to Heenan’s by ten or eleven o’clock.”

The truth was the little woman was frightened of Maggie and her influence, and she knew as well as if she had been told that while Dick always gave her twenty dollars a week, the rest of his money went to Maggie, and she wanted to get Dick out of her clutches.

When Patsy M’Gee heard of Mrs. Donovan’s wish he made up a party for the next Sunday and took her and Dick out to Mamaroneck. They had a great day and saw the house; it overlooked the Sound and had two acres of ground around it—a lovely little place. Mrs. Donovan was in ecstasies, but the price put on it they found to be five thousand dollars, and that frightened Mrs. Donovan, though the agent said he would take one thousand dollars down and the rest in three years. And when Dick opened his eyes at the one thousand dollars Patsy told him the great news, that already he had been mentioned for the next good fight and he might make five hundred dollars out of it.

A week later, with Patsy as chief agent, Dick was matched to fight Jack Geary, who had already been mentioned as the most probable American feather-weight to box Cock Robin, as he was called, the English champion who was coming across with a great reputation.

Dick had nearly a month to prepare and in this month Patsy M’Gee showed himself to be a trainer of the first class.

“You must strengthen your back muscles, my boy,” he told Dick, and presented him with a pair of heavy dumbells. “They all use the light ones,” he went on, “but I want ’em heavy for you. You are young and are coming to the end of your growth; you will have lots of extra pep to put into your back muscles now and that is where you want weight.”

Then he taught Dick how to swing Indian clubs, and again he insisted on these being heavy.

Dick took to it all with his usual enthusiasm, and he found that the dumbells and clubs strengthened his back and biceps from day to day; in fact he grew so rapidly in weight that in a week Patsy began to wonder whether he could keep down to the weight, and started him off on a long fast walk each morning to take down any fat.

About a week before the great night Patsy introduced Dick to Sid Harriman, a betting man, whom the boys thought to be a millionaire. Strange to say, Harriman, after looking him over, was pleased with his chance, and when he saw Dick box once or twice he was more pleased still, though Patsy admitted that he was not certain enough to bet much money on him. “You see,” said Patsy, “it takes a cert before they put down the dough.”

A week later Dick had his first real trial. At first it looked as if he must be beaten. In the third round Jack Geary managed to get in and do what he would; Dick could not get rid of him, and Jack punched him in the body again and again till he felt sick.

In his corner Patsy was full of advice. “Side-step him,” he said; “side-step him and keep him out; you can only wear him out. Don’t let him mix it. If he gets in again, clinch.”

And so with varying fortunes the fight went on, round after round. One round went to Dick because he was able to keep his adversary out or side-step him and his long arms did their work; other rounds went to Jack because he managed to fight his way in and used his body blows tellingly.

About the sixteenth round Dick began to feel that Geary was not hitting as hard as at the beginning, and when he came back to his corner he found Patsy of the same opinion.

“Go in and win,” he advised. “Hit him with the left and follow with the right as hard as you can on top of it. One good punch will finish him.”

Patsy told the truth. Dick half feinted, half struck, and followed it up with a heavy right, and Geary went to the floor and took the count.

Dick felt sorry for him, but Patsy whispered: “That’s the house at Mamaroneck. I’m going home with you to tell your mother; it was a great blow entoirely.” And Patsy said it full of admiration, just as if he hadn’t suggested it himself.

To Dick’s astonishment he found that he had won not only five hundred dollars, but one hundred dollars more that Mr. Harriman had left for him.

Patsy talked all the way home. “Cut out the booze and the wimmin,” he said, “and you’ll be the first fighter in America.”

“What was it knocked you out?” asked Dick at last.

“Both,” answered Patsy. “But it was the booze that made me a cripple. Sure, I was half drunk when I went into the ring. I could almost see two fighters agin’ me instead of wan.”

Mrs. Donovan was delighted, and asked Patsy in the nicest way whether he would not come out to stay with Dick and help him always with his advice; and Patsy said that was exactly what he wanted to do if she would take board-money from him.

They resolved at last to buy the house if it could be bought and go out at once with Patsy as a lodger. But the mother noticed that Dick was not keen about this. She noticed, too, that fifty dollars had disappeared next morning and that Maggie had a new dress on and a new hat that must have cost all of ten dollars. “The slut!” she said to herself.

A night or two later she had a real talk with her son.

“I only want your good,” she said; “ye are all I have in the world. I would give ye all the girls in New York if it would do ye any good; but Maggie Rubin is not a good girl, and if ye want me to I can prove it.”

But Dick didn’t want any proof. He kissed his mother and told her she was the best mother in the world and then went out to fight his first soul-battle alone.

That week he was with Maggie more than ever, perhaps because of the new dress and hat. Towards the end of the week, after a round or two with Ed Jones, Patsy took him seriously to task.

“Why is it you are not so fast to-day?” he said. “It isn’t booze with you. Wimmin’s the divil!” he went on; “the bad ones are ruination and the good ones won’t lave a man alone.”

Dick scarcely needed telling. He, too, had felt when sparring with Jones that his blows lacked speed; he sometimes saw the opening almost as soon as his hand took advantage of it, whereas before his hands were always quicker than his eyes.

A little later the crisis came. When he got home he found his mother waiting for him, and she spoke briefly and to the point:

“The girl’s out with a salesman from Macy’s,” she said, “and I heard him say he was going to take her to a roadhouse for the night, and that’s not the first time, I’ll be bound,” she added.

That was the worst night in Dick’s life. To say he was awake all night would be nothing like the truth; he was mad with jealousy and rage, and when it got light his mother knew that he was crying in his bed at the side. She had stretched burlap from the ceiling between the beds so as to give both all possible privacy. Her heart was as sore as Dick’s and she suffered with him.

When Dick got up he went straight to Heenan’s and sought out Patsy. “Let’s go out to Mamaroneck at once,” he said; “to-day if you like.”

But matters could not move as quickly as that.

Before he went he got a note from Maggie, who had somehow or other heard of the intended moving, begging him to see her.

“Dick, you must forgive me,” she said, kissing him. “I love you, you know, dear; but I’ve got to get money to keep the house, Dick. Dave brings in nothing, and my father’s only good to be a Rabbi and say prayers and mother and I must live. Mr. Williams is the head salesman at Macy’s and gets one thousand dollars a month now and a commission. If you had such a place—oh, Dick, it’s too hard, for I love you,” and she hugged him; “but what’s a girl to do. After all one must have money to live. Dick, say you’ll always care for me—won’t you, dearest?”

Dick nodded his head; he could find no words. He was numbed and for the moment felt nothing, and when afterwards the pain began again he found it was lessened by Maggie’s assurance that she loved him best, so strong is vanity even in passion. And Maggie probably believed her protestations of affection, though in the back of her little head she knew that Mr. Williams was “a dandy dancer,” as she phrased it, and took her to dine and dance at swell places Dick had never heard of, though Williams didn’t slip her fifty or one hundred dollars as Dick did, and was not so loving. Still his position was sure, and he had told her he’d be rich one day and already he had twenty-five thousand dollars in good securities laid by, and that seemed to Maggie a fortune.

Take it all in all, Maggie was rather relieved that the Donovans were going to move, for Dick’s propinquity and passion were tempting, and she knew instinctively that Williams wouldn’t forgive an infidelity as easily as Dick did—“dear Dick!”

In concert with Mrs. Donovan, Patsy got Dick two contests at Philadelphia, which took him away for a while, and when he returned to old New York he found his mother and Patsy already settled in Mamaroneck.

With one exceptional happening Dick’s career in the next two years could be told in a phrase. He fought Cock Robin, the best English fighter of his weight, and won after a hard battle of eighteen rounds, mainly because the fight with Geary had taught him how to keep his man at arm’s length and use his height and length of reach. Height helps a man; you can hit down heavier than up, and length of reach, too, Dick found, helped him, as a longer sword used to help a duellist till it was forbidden and the swords were equalised to an eighth of an inch.

Thanks to the open-air runs and the constant exercise with clubs and dumbells, reinforced now with all sorts of stomach exercises under Patsy M’Gee’s superintendence, Dick grew rapidly in sheer muscle weight, and with all the glory of his victory over the English champion about him, was matched to fight Zu Lenward for the bantam championship of the world.

Zu, Dick found, was short for Zulu, because Lenward had coloured blood in him. Anyway, according to Patsy, he was a real opponent and “up to every trick in the game, but a little ould; he must be thirty if he’s a day.”

A week before the fight Sid Harriman drew Dick aside. “What will you make by winning?” he asked.

“The purse is for two thousand dollars,” replied Dick simply.

“You can have ten thousand dollars,” said Harriman, looking him straight in the eyes, “to lose in the eleventh round.”

“How do you mean?” asked Dick.

“Let yourself be knocked out,” answered Harriman. “I will tell Lenward, and the punch you will get on your jaw won’t do you any harm, and you can flop about like a fish on the floor as well as another man I suppose.”

Dick looked at him. Sell the fight? Not he. But he went to Patsy with the news, and to his astonishment Patsy was delighted with the offer: “Ten thou.!” he cried; “that’s goin’ some.”

“But I can’t take it,” said Dick; “I’d be ashamed to sell a fight——”

“You can’t buck against the game,” Patsy admonished. “Nobody can be honest in this life. Suppose you go on bein’ honest and beatin’ everybody, no wan will bet agin’ ye. You won’t get a match, man; they’ll avoid ye like the plague. All the excitement is in the doubt.

“Take the ten thousand dollars for being knocked out or you’ll regret it. It will increase the interest for your next fight, and if you win that there’ll be more dough still in being knocked out the time after. Don’t be a fool. Sure, no wan will bet on you if he does not win by you.

“Take the ten thousand dollars, boy, and put it in your kick. You make glory by winnin’ but the dough by losin’.”

Dick could not stomach this advice. Sid Harriman did not come near him though Patsy was evidently on his side. A day or two afterwards he returned to the charge.

“You’re young, Dick,” he said, “and you scarcely know what a foul is. You’re a clean fighter; but nobody can be honest in this game, Dick, nobody. You are very good, but as good as you or better can be found. Put the money in your jeans, man, and don’t be a boob!

“I know what life is. You have only five years at this game. At the end of that time you’ll either be a rich man or you will be knocked out and poor, perhaps paralytic. Dick, if you were my own son, I’d tell you the same thing. Let me go to Mr. Harriman and accept his offer. I’ll get you two thousand in advance—as much as you’d get by winnin’—and eight thou, after. What better can ye want?”

Dick shook his head. He was obstinate, though honesty to him was only a word. In his cruel doubt he went to his mother for counsel. “You dassen’t act dishonest, Dick,” she cried, “and yer father a polisman; but Patsy,” she added inconsecutively, as Dick thought, “is a good man and a friendly.” Something obstinate in Dick made him stick to his first resolution.

Was it Dick’s fancy when the great day came, or was there really an air of doubt in the room before the fight began?

Zulu was much stronger than he looked. All his weight was behind the shoulders. His legs were very thin and betrayed the coloured blood in him; but he was twenty-six or twenty-seven at least and, like most prize-fighters, he had lived a life of alternate hard training and mad dissipation, so that, as Patsy phrased it, the real “pep” had gone out of him. Still, he was an awkward customer and Patsy preached caution.

“Keep him out; keep him out,” was his advice in every round, and towards the tenth round he began to get insistent. “Keep him out and watch him. Mr. Harriman’s not coming round again is a bad sign, Dick! Watch him and hit like hell. Watch him and do all you know.”

In the eleventh round Dick’s blows and his long reach and height began to tell. Suddenly Zulu feinted and drew Dick’s left. As the Zulu rushed in Dick stepped back and hit hard with the right, but the Zulu ducked it and threw his arms round him.

“Break away! break away!” cried the referee, stepping forward to the fighters. But before Dick could break away the Zulu had struck up against him with his knee, and the whole room swam with lights, floor and people all rocking in his agony. Zulu jumped in like a wild cat, hitting again and again, and when lying on the floor Dick heard the referee counting—seven—eight—nine. He tried to get up, but couldn’t. The next moment Patsy had burst into the ring and carried him out to the dressing-room.

A doctor came and they gave him brandy, which only seemed to intensify the intolerable pain. He was fully conscious now and sick as a dog. He heard the doctor say: “He’s young and there’s nothing burst; he’ll be all right in a week. Was it a blow?”

“Zulu’s knee,” said Patsy, sobbing with rage. “I never warned the boy. I thought he could keep him out.”

Dick never knew how he got to Mamaroneck; in fact he was ill for nearly three weeks and it was a month before he came again to Heenan’s, and as luck would have it the first man he met was Sid Harriman.

“You didn’t want the two thousand or the ten thousand dollars either,” said Harriman, sneering, “but you took the knockout in the eleventh round all the same. It doesn’t pay to be a d—d boob.”

All Dick’s anger at the sneering tone vanished. “I guess you’re right, Mr. Harriman,” he said. “It doesn’t pay to be a boob.” But he registered an oath to himself that the next time he met Zu Lenward he would take it out of him.

But he didn’t know even then how being honest in life weights the dice against you. He found it hard to get a match, and without Patsy it might have been impossible.

He proposed to fight this man or that, but everyone turned him down. At length he asked Patsy for the reason and Patsy gave it to him with a certain reluctance.

“Put yourself in the other man’s place and think,” he said at length; “that’s the way to understand it right.

“Why did Harriman offer you ten thousand dollars to lose that fight? Because he had some big bet on—perhaps for one hundred thousand dollars—that you would lose it, and perhaps another bet at long odds that you’d be knocked out in the eleventh round.

“Now when you refused what had he to do? First, he had to tell Zu Lenward to knock you out in the eleventh round; but he had to pay for that. Zulu said ‘’twas only certain by a foul.’ ‘Then you must foul him,’ said Harriman, and he’d have to pay much more for a foul. Besides in case of a foul the referee must be squared, and that costs a mint of money; then the foul may be seen by the onlookers and cause a scandal, and therefore he bears you malice for making him pay out p’r’haps five times as much as he had reckoned on paying. See!

“Well, thin it’s all over and you’re K.O. And later your name comes up before the promoters and Harriman says: ‘Not that guy; he’s honest or stupid or——’ And so you’re finding it hard to get in the swim agin, but you’ll get in. I know how to do that. Harriman won’t let anger button his pocket; lave it to me.”

The chance came sooner than Dick thought possible. Two or three months later he fought with Walt Thompson and that gave him the right to fight Lenward again for the championship. This time he made no mistake. He had measured his man. In the first two or three rounds he hit him so heavily that the result was not doubtful. A pitiless devil had entered into Dick and he was transformed. He fought as he had never fought—not to win, but to punish—and by the tenth round Lenward was incapable of any tricks. He was beaten to standstill, and in the seventeenth round was knocked clean off his feet and through the ropes. The cool savagery pleased the onlookers, and Dick went out of the ring a fighting man willing now to take his orders and put the dough in his jeans. He realized that being straight led only to ruin.

The next time he fought it was all arranged. Sid Harriman told him that he was to be knocked out in the fourteenth round and in the fourteenth round he gave his opponent an opening and got it on the jaw. He flopped about on the floor like a fish till even Harriman was delighted. “Some actor,” he cried. “By God! I thought for the moment you were knocked out.”

Patsy, too, was delighted, for Dick’s bank account had jumped up five thousand dollars, and there was more excitement about his next appearance than there had ever been before.

The next two years were filled with alternate victories and defeats, and it seemed curious to Dick, but it was the defeats that brought in the money—twenty thousand and fifty thousand dollars at a time—and no risk—even of a foul. The certainties gave the cash.

Gradually the place at Mamaroneck was improved and extended. One year Dick bought ten acres of adjoining land and the next spring built a walled-in bathing place and a little pier for the time he’d be able to afford a steam launch, the desire of his life.

Towards the end of the third year he outgrew the weight, and though for six months or so he could still sweat himself down to it by hard exercise he preferred to give up the championship even while he was too light to enter the light-weight class with any hope of conspicuous success.

Bu he had no difficulty in getting a vaudeville engagement at a thousand a week for boxing with Ed Jones a quarter of an hour each night, and he soon found that the rest and absence of championship contests improved his health and strength in the most astonishing way. Of course he described the improvement to Patsy, and as usual Patsy, who could hardly write and never cared to read, understood the phenomenon and had reasoned it out for himself.

“Sure, it’s plain,” he said, “every athlete has to take a rest before he comes to the trial; even a jumper or runner has to have a day’s rest annyway before he tries to beat the record. That’s why I never let you box for a couple of days before goin’ into the ring. And a tough fight takes it out of a man more than annything else in the world.

“Take the great fight between Sharkey and Jeffries, the greatest fight ever was fought; they both went into the ring perfectly trained, yet Sharkey, who had two ribs broken, lost thirteen pounds in weight in the fifty minutes the fight lasted and Jeffries lost eleven. Think of it! eleven pounds lost in an hour by a man trained fine and hard. A fight’s a dreadful punishin’ test, even if you win.

“A man,” he went on reflectively, “has only a certain amount of reserve vitality; it’s like a balance in the bank; he should never exhaust it or draw it down too low, for it’s that gives him strength. When you increase the size of yer muscles you do it through using some of this nerve-force, and you must rest in order to let it accumulate again. Rest’s a great thing,” Patsy summed up, “and so’s exercise, and you need both to be perfect. This vaudeville stunt for a year or so will be the making of ye, if ye keep away from wimmin an’ booze.”

But the stream of Dick’s life was not fated to run as smoothly as Patsy hoped. Men are the dupes of their desires. Dick had a pronounced success on the stage; he was good-looking and lightly built, without the bunchy biceps and knobs of muscle which most strong men display and most women dislike. He boxed with a certain grace and his footwork in especial was magically swift and catlike. His Celtic sensitive nature made him a natural actor, and from his first appearance he got letters from women and girls who wanted to know him.

Along in the first summer he and Jones were filling a week’s engagement at Newark, N.J., when a rich woman, a Mrs. Faber, invited them to a garden-party, and arranged that they should box for the amusement of her guests. Both men took the invitation as a mere joke; but the grounds were crowded with fashionably dressed young people, and the performance was a huge success. After the boxing Mrs. Faber, struck by Dick’s looks and quiet manners, introduced him to some of her guests, and notably to a Miss Woolcombe, who set Dick’s blood in a turmoil. The first glance from her dark eyes and Dick’s heart seemed to stop; he had to gulp down the fever of emotion, and indeed Kate Woolcombe was pretty enough to have seduced a less impressionable nature. In ten minutes Dick found that she had a very keen sense of humour; a sort of natural gaiety danced in her hazel eyes and lit up her whole face. And her personality was as marked as her beauty. When he spoke of his home at Mamaroneck and the joy he took in the waters of the Sound he was delighted to learn that she lived there too, not a mile away, with her father and mother. “May I call?” Dick risked; but the little lady treated the question quite as a matter of course. “I think my mother will be glad,” she said, “and my young brother will be overjoyed; in fact the eldest, Harold, who is just seventeen, will make a hero of you at once, I’m sure,” and she laughed charmingly.

When they said “Good-bye,” and she gave him her hand, he had to look at it in surprise, it was so tiny.

Dick went back to his hotel walking on air; the vision of the mutinous lips and laughing eyes went with him everywhere; in bed, when he tried to sleep, they were photographed on his brain in colour, lifelike. At first it was the sheer bodily beauty of her that enthralled him, the little round lissom figure, the lovely face; but soon this vision grew less distinct, while the impression of her whole personality seemed to grow deeper.

As soon as Dick got back to New York he called at the Woolcombes, and found they lived in a big colonial house bowered amidst gardens and overlooking a wide reach and the shore of Long Island. Mrs. Woolcombe was kind to him, with a shade of restraint, and the banker father condescending at first, but the two boys, Harold and Fred, soon broke the ice by their enthusiastic interest in “the great game” and hero worship of the champion whose feats they had read about.

Then a new life began for Dick. Miss Kate read a great deal and spoke French fairly and had more than a bowing acquaintance with French literature.

She was learning Spanish, Dick found out, and this pleased him as putting her too with him in the class of learners. His naïve admiration of her wisdom and knowledge made her laugh outright, but at the same time flattered her deliciously, and the acquaintance ripened rapidly, thanks mainly to the two boys.

Dick gave Harold boxing lessons, and soon his sister heard nothing but “Dick does this” and “Patsy says that” till the two households became intimate. Mrs. Donovan was unaffectedly proud when Mrs. Woolcombe came to see her, but had the natural tact and good manners of the Celtic race, and the better-taught woman recognised at once her native good sense and amiability.

The year before Dick had realised his dream and had bought a high-powered launch, and Fred soon learned to drive it as well as the owner, and so the four made continual excursions. It was a book and a moonlit night that finally brought Dick and Kate together.

They had gone for a long trip in the launch, had taken food with them and were returning rather late. Kate had lent Dick Slippy McGee, and Dick wanted to know whether the heroine had realised that Slippy was in love with her first. Did she hold aloof from him because he had been a burglar? “No,” Kate thought, “that had nothing to do with it.”

“You know,” said Dick simply, “that’s why I’m afraid to tell you how I love you, for fear you’d think a prize-fighter too common to care for.”

She sat there beside him in silence, as if thinking, and he went on with love’s instinctive cunning: “It’s for all my life. Oh, Kate, I’d be content to wait on you hand and foot and serve you all my days if you’d just let me,” and he stole his arm round her waist. “I know I’m not good enough for you; I knew that when you just said ‘Good-bye’ to me at Mrs. Faber’s and gave me your little hand. Sure, look how small it is beside mine,” he continued, taking it in his own brown paw; then lifting it he kissed it again and again and looked up. Kate’s face was very earnest and her eyes flooded with emotion. “I love you, darling,” he went on, and somehow their lips met.

Dick never forgot that kiss. It was more than a kiss; it was a consecration. “I’m not good enough,” he went on. “I wish I were better. I’ll try,” he ended simply.

“We’ll both try,” the girl said. “You mustn’t run yourself down.... You’re good enough for me, Dick,” she added, “for I love you.”

They sat hand in hand in a sacred silence and next day agreed to say nothing about their love for a little while, as if such a secret could be kept.

But the course of passionate love never yet ran smooth; smoothness is not in the nature of a torrent, and Kate’s awakening came very soon.

The rest and the long trips in the motor-launch had made Dick put on flesh, and one day Patsy weighed him and was horrified to find that he was beyond the light-weight limit. He measured him too, and found that he had grown nearly an inch and was now five feet ten and a half inches, with an arm-stretch of nearly seventy-six inches. At once he set Dick to work: long walks and runs every morning; potatoes and bread and all sweets were cut out of the diet, and instead of a lounging day steady exercise increasing in severity, especially exercise on the mat.

“You are strong enough for annything,” said Patsy, “but now I want to get thim belly muscles as hard as iron—strong enough to protect that plexus of yours. Sure you put your big shoulder in front of yur chin fine; nobody will get you on the chin; but you are inclined to lave yourself open about the body, and a punch on the spleen would make you go groggy.”

Dick realised the truth of this, and as usual went in for the new exercises with enthusiasm, Patsy assuring him that the stomach muscles were the strongest in the body and that he could make them like a wall of steel if he chose.

In three months, when Dick had brought himself down to the requisite weight, Patsy went into Heenan’s every day and soon made up a fight between him and the light-weight champion, Benny Rossiter.

Benny was the best man that Dick so far had ever met. A New England boy, brought up on a farm, he had gone to Princeton and there fallen in love with the game, perhaps because of his extraordinary excellence in it. Almost as soon as he began to box he seemed to know everything by instinct. Patsy and Dick went one afternoon to see him box, and Dick was impressed by his speed and strength. He was very dark; some said his mother was a Jewess. While only five feet seven or eight in height he was more strongly built than Dick, and carried, they said, a terrible punch in his right hand. But what Dick especially admired about him was the natural way he ducked and slipped, even in practice boxing; it was uncanny the way he could get down and avoid blows.

“That man is better than me,” said Dick, as they went away.

“Better’n nothin’,” replied Patsy; “he’s naturally quick and he has learned the game like them amatoors, but you have learned it bit by bit and paid for your knowledge again and again. I tell you he will live with you only about ten rounds, perhaps twelve, and then he’ll go to pieces.”

The announcement of the fight made a great sensation. There was nothing much doing in 1919 and the papers seized on the two men as representative Americans; would-be literary men wrote them up incessantly, and the reporters told everything about their daily lives and practice that they could get hold of.

Benny, the college boy, was of course the favourite in better circles, so Dick was not surprised when Harriman came round to watch him exercising one day and afterwards said to him:

“This thing must be staged in Madison Square Garden, and there ought to be a big wad in it. If I give you ten per cent. of what I make clear will that suit you?”

Dick looked at Patsy. “Sure,” said Patsy; “sure, Mr. Harriman. Dick will fight according to instructions.”

A day or two afterwards he learned that he was to be knocked out in the eighth round.

He regretted this for one reason in especial. Both the Woolcombe boys were crazy to see him fight and had begun to bet on his winning, and one day Kate said to him shyly: “I would like to see you in the real ring, though I am afraid it will be very brutal.”

“Oh, you mustn’t come this time,” Dick blurted out.

“Why not?” she asked.

“You know,” he said, putting his arms round her and drawing her to him, “I told you long ago I was not good enough for you”; and then love’s humility being strong upon him, with the need for confession and the urge to tell the loved one the very worst about himself, he went on:

“I’m going to lose this fight. Benny Rossiter is very good”; and seeing her look of amazement, added, “and I’m a little out of practice—and—I shall probably make a lot of money by losing.”

“What do you mean?” asked the girl, with parted lips and wide-open eyes. “What do you mean, Dicky?”

“Just that,” he said bitterly. “He is champion, and it pays a fighting man to lose some fights. I’ll get another chance later and then maybe you can come to see it. If I lose then it will be because I am not good enough to win.”

They were entering her house when he began speaking and she gave him no chance to talk further to her that day, and the next day he got a letter from her in which she said that she could not believe what he had told her; could not believe that he was going to let himself be beaten in order to win money unfairly—“because that was what you said, Dick: no one but yourself would make me believe it of you.”

He had feared just this and now the catastrophe was overwhelming. He wrote begging for an interview, and when she kept away a couple of days without answering him he confided in Patsy and sent him to her. Patsy shook his head when he knew what was expected of him.

“All wimmin is crazy,” was Patsy’s verdict; “they’re all looney. Does she expect a prize-fighter to be an angel; why doesn’t she feel for your wings? Does she think a boy like you could have one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the bank and a place like this in four years by fighting on the square? Why, it ain’t sense! Let her go and ask her banker father how he made his fortune; sure, she’ll find that he has done things that would make Beelzebub blush, if he tells the truth, but he’s too cunning.”

But Dick prayed him to do his best as mediator and sent him off, and the result of Patsy’s intercession was that the day after he got another little note from Kate: “Have you told your mother? Does she approve?”

So Dick had to tell his mother the same day. When he told her that he was going to lose the fight and that it was by losing that he had made all his money, she looked at him horror-stricken, almost like Kate, and cried out: “Oh, wirra, wirra, to think of that and you a son of a p’lisman.”

Dick felt inclined to smile, but it was on the wrong side of his mouth. There was something pathetic in Mrs. Donovan’s hero-worship of her policeman husband as a defender of justice and a champion of right.

The next three or four days were filled for Dick with suffering of a new sort. In many Celts there is a vein of absolute pessimism, and as Dick did not see how to conquer this difficulty the natural melancholy of his nature awoke and he simply tried to make up his mind that he had lost everything, that life was like that; it would give you this, that and the other, and then snatch the cup of happiness from your lips and spill the golden liquid in the dust.

“It was to be,” he said to himself with Celtic fatalism. “I suppose it had to be.”

But now Patsy got after him. He was falling off in his speed and strength, and as a ring-general Patsy would not permit that. In his misery Dick at last told Harold all about it, and although he did not know he thereby played a winning card, for Harold, boylike, saw very little in it and went to his father, and when his father heard that Dick would probably win one hundred thousand dollars, and not be hurt by losing, he said before his daughter that he hoped a man would not fool enough to throw away such a chance of a fortune. His daughter turned on him, but her mother immediately sided with the father, and Kate began to feel outlawed in her righteousness. In her heart she was glad to acknowledge that perhaps she had been too severe, and off she went with her brother to meet Dick.

The reconciliation was a renewal of love. In her desire to atone she showed her lover all the warmth in her nature. She threw her arms round his neck and said: “I won’t dispute any more. I think life horrid. But one thing I am determined on. I want you to leave off fighting altogether. Surely after this big lot of money we’ll have enough and you can get a vaudeville engagement as you had at first.”

Dick was jubilant. “I will lose this fight,” he said, “but within three months the fight for the championship will be staged again, and if I win it I’ll fight no more. I’ve had enough of it. I’d like to travel in France and Ireland and perhaps learn something and be more worthy of you.”

And for the first time he ventured to touch her breasts and show his passion. To his delight she responded and kissed him with hot lips. And when he put his arms round her and held her to him closely she was all yielding softness, and his desire for her grew to madness.

The fight at Madison Square Garden attracted an enormous crowd. The place was crammed from floor to ceiling at unheard-of prices and the betting was insane.

Dick measured his man as well as he could without trying to beat him, and in about the eight or ninth round came to the conclusion that he could beat him. Nevertheless he took the right and left on the jaw in the twelfth round and went down for the count.

The audience went crazy with delight. The best people in New York were there, had all bet on the college boy, and the college boy had won. It had been a clean fight and their joy knew no bounds, and the Irish who followed Dick to a man took their beating philosophically. “It always needs a batin’,” they said, “to wake our man up. Sure, Donovan will come again, and the next time we’ll get our money back and more.”

And that turned out to be very near the truth. Another fight for the championship was staged in Newark, N.J., and once again the papers boosted the fight just as if they had been paid for the advertisement, when they got nothing by it except enthusiastic readers.

Before the training even began Dick had a long talk with Harriman.

“We’ll begin,” said that gentleman, “by handing you these for the last fight,” and he gave Dick four cheques for twenty-five thousand dollars each; “that’s about eleven per cent. of what I made.”

Dick thanked him.

“And now,” Harriman went on, “I want you to do me a favour. Can you beat him?”

Dick nodded his head.

“Are you sure? I can only get odds of about five or six to four against you. Dare I risk eight hundred thousand dollars on it? Will you bring me my money home? If you do I’ll quit promoting and retire to my place in the Adirondacks.”

“One can never be as sure of winning as of losing,” Dick replied, “but I am satisfied I can beat him and I intend to.”

A few days afterwards the announcement came out that an agreement had been signed; the prize would be one hundred thousand dollars, sixty thousand dollars to go to the victor and forty thousand dollars to the loser. Nine out of ten newspaper readers in New York believed that Rossiter would be the victor and that Dick would again be beaten.

This time the whole Woolcombe family came to the fight. Harold and Fred had interested the father and mother, and even Kate was carried off her feet by the excitement.

The fight was very like one of the old Roman gladiatorial contests. Harriman and his friends had built up a great amphitheatre that would hold nearly sixty thousand persons.

At three o’clock on the appointed day the two men faced each other in the ring. Half-an-hour before Harriman had said to Dick: “If you beat him before the tenth round I will owe you another sixty thousand dollars”; so Dick went in under the eyes of his love determined to fight as he had never fought before, but like an old ring-general determined, too, not to risk anything.

The first two rounds went to Dick, but the third went to Benny. He had slipped Dick’s lead and ducked under his right arm with catlike speed, and in infighting he was more than Dick’s match. But Dick’s stomach muscles had become indeed bands of steel; no body punch of Benny’s had the smallest effect on him. Again and again Benny drove in his right like a battering pile and again and again Dick took the blow and countered on the jaw. The third and fourth time he countered so heavily that Benny reeled back. At once Dick was on him, raining down a hurricane of blows, right and left, with all the power of advance and the spring from hip and shoulder in every blow. Before the torrent Benny went down, and though he got to his feet again before eight was counted, it was only the gong sounding at the end of the round that saved him from being knocked out in the third round.

The fourth and fifth rounds he fought very cautiously, avoiding everything and ducking all Dick’s blows, waiting evidently to get back his strength. But Dick took Patsy’s advice and crowded the fight; he jumped in, hitting right and left with tremendous speed and force, following his man to his corner. In the sixth round Benny was overwhelmed. His blows had lost both speed and force, telegraphing thereby to Dick that his opportunity had come, and he used it quite fairly but relentlessly. Before the round was half through Benny’s seconds threw up the sponge and the championship was won.

So perfect was Patsy’s training that Dick had scarcely a mark on him and felt really just as well as when he entered the ring.

Mr. Woolcombe was delighted. It appeared that he was a friend and backer of Harriman, and this time Harriman had let him in on the good thing and he had made nearly a quarter of a million dollars betting on Dick.

They all went back in automobiles to Mamaroneck and the Woolcombes gave Dick a supper. After the supper the lovers stole out together and, to Dick’s surprise and joy, Kate was incandescent, which, whether Dick knew it or not, was full of good promise for his married happiness. She caressed his bruised cheeks and fondled his hands with little cries of passionate tenderness. The varied incidents of the conflict, the dreadful risks, the alternate mad hopes and fears had whipped her blood to flame and held her enthralled, panting with excitement, and then the appalling swift attack, the grace, speed and strength of her lover had swept her off her feet, flooding her with a delicious triumph and afterwards the wild applause of the ringside and cheering of the crowd had broken her will to resist and made of her his creature—one with him for ever.

“Oh, Dick, Dick,” she sobbed, “you wonderful Dick,” and tears streamed from her eyes; “but—but—” (striving to control herself) “I was sorry for Benny; you hit him dreadfully. It’s the last fight, isn’t it, dear?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Dick. “The vaudeville manager told me he would give me fifteen hundred dollars a week, and that ought to keep us for the next year or two. I want to read and study and become worthy of you.”

“You are worthy of any woman,” she said, looking up at him with shining wet eyes. “Oh, Dick, the applause of the people and their cheering will be in my ears all my life. You’re a hero, sir, to hundreds of thousands.”

And perhaps, as heroes go, Dick Donovan deserved the title better than most.

THE TEMPLE TO THE FORGOTTEN DEAD