that bad light kindling in the ex-lightweight's eyes. Dennison was
the promoter who had backed Jed The Red from the day when the latter
had fought his first fight.

And, "You don't mean," he faltered, "Flash, you don't mean that you
think that boy can stop----"

Hogarty's thin voice bit in and cut him short.

"Think?" he demanded. "Think? I don't have to think any more! I
know!"

For a second he seemed to be pondering something; then he threw up his
head again. And his startlingly sudden burst of laughter made
Morehouse wince a little.

"Don't make a fool of him, Chub?" he croaked. "Be merciful with the
boy! Man, you're half an hour late! I did my best. Oh, I'm bad--I know
just how bad I can be, when I try. But he called me! Yes, that's what
he did--he as much as told me that I wasn't giving him a chance to get
his cards on the table. So I ran him up against Sutton. And I did more
than that. I told Boots to get him--told him to beat him to death--and
I meant it, too! And do you know what happened? Could you guess? Well,
I'll tell you and save you time.

"He went in and took enough punishment from Boots in that first round
to make any man stop and think. He put up the worst exhibition I ever
saw, just because he was trying to fight the way Ogden had coached
him, instead of his own style. That was the first round; but it didn't
take him very long to see where he had been wrong. There wasn't any
second round--that is, not so that you could really notice it.

"He was waiting for the bell, and the gong just seemed to pick him up
and drop him in the middle of the ring. And Sutton went to him--and he
caught Boots coming in! Why, he just snapped his right over and
straightened him up, and then stepped in and whipped across his left,
and Boots went back into the ropes. He went back--and he stayed
back!"

Swiftly, almost gutturally, Hogarty sketched it all out: Young Denny's
calm statement of his errand, his own groundless burst of spleen, and
the outcome of the try-out which had sent him hurrying back to Denny's
dressing-room with many questions on his tongue's tip and a living
hope in his brain which he hardly dared to nurse.

Hogarty even recalled and related the late delivery of the card of
introduction which Morehouse was now nervously twisting into misshapen
shreds and, word for word, repeated the boy's grave explanation of his
reason for that tardiness.

"He bothered you, did he?" he asked. "Well, he had me gu