that isn't
pay dirt!"

His voice dropped in register. It just missed being hoarse. With a
rapidity that was almost bewildering he began to give orders to the
two boys who were still phlegmatically waxing the floor. And the
English-professor intonation was gone entirely.

"You, Joe!" he called, "get out the rods; set 'em up and rope her off!
Legs, you chase out and find Sutton, if he's not in back. You'll run
into him at Sharp's, most likely. Tell him to come a-running. Tell him
a new one's drifted in from the frontier--and thinks he needs to be
shown. Move, you shrimp!"

Before he had finished speaking he had started toward the locker
rooms at the rear. Denny he ignored as though he did not exist. He
went without a sound in his rubber-soled shoes. Bobby Ogden, waking
suddenly from his trancelike condition, leaped to his feet and ran
after him. Hogarty halted at the pressure of the boy's pink-nailed
fingers on his arm and wheeled to show a face that was startlingly
white and strained.

"Why, you great big kid!" Bobby Ogden flung at him. "You big infant!
You're really sore! Don't you know he didn't mean anything. He's only
a kid himself--and you egged him into it!"

"Is he?"

From that gently rising inflection alone Ogden knew that interference
was absolutely hopeless.

"Is he? Well, he's old enough to seem to know what he wants. And he's
going to get it--see? He's going to get it--and--get--it--good! No man
ever flung it into my face that I didn't give him a chance--not and
got away with it."

Hogarty glanced meaningly down at the restraining hand upon his sleeve
and Ogden removed it hastily. He stood in dismayed indecision until
the ex-lightweight had disappeared before he turned toward Young
Denny, who had been watching in silence his effort at intervention.
Denny had not moved. Ogden's almost girlishly modeled face was more
than apprehensive as he stepped up to him.

"He's mad," he stated flatly. "You've got him peeved for keeps. And I
guess you've let yourself in for quite a merry little session, too,
unless--unless"--he hesitated, peering curiously in Denny's grave
face, "unless you want to make a nice quiet little exit before he
comes back with Sutton. You can, you know, and--and it may save you
quite a little--er--discomfort in the long run. Sutton--well, the
least I can say of Sutton is that he's inclined to be a trifle
rough!"

Ogden saw that slow smile returning; he saw it start far back in the