landed flush upon the side of the jaw.

Conway called to his aid all the ring-generalship of which he was
capable in that opening round. Once that lightening-like fist reached
out and found his mouth. A trickle of blood oozed red from the lips
that puffed up, almost before the glove came away; once when he had
seen an opening and led for The Pilgrim's own face, that wicked jolt
caught him wide open. He ducked his head between his shoulders then.
The shock sent him to his knees, but that upraised shoulder saved him.
The force of that glancing smash had spent itself before it reached
his unprotected neck.

There was no let-up--no lull in the relentless advance. He was on his
feet again, grim, grasping, reeling, hanging on! And again that
avalanche of destruction enveloped him.

He fought to drop into a clinch, for one breath's respite, his huge
hairy arms slipping hungrily out about Denny's white body, but even as
he snuggled his body close in, that fist lashed up between them and
found his chin again. It straightened him, flung him back. And once
more, before the certain annihilation of that blow, he ducked his head
in between his shoulders.

Old Jerry heard the crash of the glove against the top of his head; he
saw Conway hurled back into the ropes. But not until seconds later,
when he realized that the roar of the crowd had hushed, did he see
that a change had come over the fight.

Conway was no longer giving ground; he was himself driving in more and
more viciously, for that deadly right hand no longer leaped out to
check him. Twice just as Denny had rocked him he now jolted his own
right over to The Pilgrim's face. At each blow the boy lashed out with
his left hand. Both blows he missed, and the second time the force of
his swing whirled him against the barrier. Right and left Conway sent
his gloves crashing into his unprotected stomach--right and left!

And then the tap of the gong!

Hogarty was through the ropes with the bell. As Denny dropped upon the
stool he stripped the glove from the boy's right hand and examined it
with anxious fingers. The other two were sponging his chest with
water--pumping fresh air into his lungs; but Old Jerry's eyes clung to
the calamity written upon Hogarty's gray features.

Everybody else seemed to understand what had happened--everybody but
himself. He turned again to the man next him on the bench. Morehouse,
too, had been watching the ex-lightweight's deft fingers.

"Bro