er he had lifted the mare from her
shuffling fox-trot to a lumbering gallop, Old Jerry turned back for a
last shouted word.

"He'll be anxious to git all I can tell him, don't you think?" the
shrill falsetto drifted back to the boy who had not stirred in his
tracks. "No article would be complete without that, would it? And
they's to be pictures--Sunday paper--and--maybe--in colors!"

There was an odd light burning in Denny Bolton's eyes as he stood and
watched the crazy conveyance disappear from view. The half hungry,
half sullen bewilderment seemed to have given place to a new
confusion, as though all the questions which had always been baffling
him had become, all in one breath, an astounding enigma which clamored
for instant solution. Not until the shrill scream of the ungreased
axles had died out altogether and his eyes fell once more to the vivid
streak of red that ran across the top of the sheet still clutched in
his hand did Young Denny realize that Jerry had even failed to leave
him the rest of his mail--the bulky package of circulars.

He was smiling again as he turned and went slowly toward the back door
of the house, but somehow, as he went, the stoop of his big shoulders
seemed to have even more than the usual vague hint of weariness in
their heavy droop. He even forgot that the hungry team which he had
stabled just a few minutes before was still unfed, as he dropped upon
the top step and spread the paper out across his knees.

"Jed The Red wins by knockout over The Texan in fourteenth round," he
read again and again.

And then, with a slow forefinger blazing the way, he went on through
the detailed account of the latest big heavyweight match, from the
first paragraph, which stated that "Jed Conway, having disposed of The
Texan at the Arena last night, by the knockout route in the fourteenth
round, seems to loom up as the logical claimant of the white
heavyweight title," to the last one of all, which pithily advised the
public that "the winner's share of the receipts amounted to twelve
thousand dollars."

It was all couched in the choicest vocabulary of the ringside, and
more than once Young Denny, whose literature had been confined
chiefly to harvesters and sulky plows, had to stop and decipher
phrases which he only half understood at first reading. But that last
paragraph he did not fail to grasp.

It grew too dark for him to make out the small type any longer and the
boy folded the paper and laid