e station just
outside of Philadelphia, and when he was out of hearing, but not out of
sight, purchased one for the same place.

The stranger went into the smoking-car, and seated himself at one end
toward the door. Gallegher took his place at the opposite end.

He was trembling all over, and suffered from a slight feeling of nausea.
He guessed it came from fright, not of any bodily harm that might come
to him, but of the probability of failure in his adventure and of its
most momentous possibilities.

The stranger pulled his coat collar up around his ears, hiding the lower
portion of his face, but not concealing the resemblance in his troubled
eyes and close-shut lips to the likenesses of the murderer Hade.

They reached Torresdale in half an hour, and the stranger, alighting
quickly, struck off at a rapid pace down the country road leading to the
station.

Gallegher gave him a hundred yards' start, and then followed slowly
after. The road ran between fields and past a few frame-houses set far
from the road in kitchen gardens.

Once or twice the man looked back over his shoulder, but he saw only a
dreary length of road with a small boy splashing through the slush in
the midst of it and stopping every now and again to throw snowballs at
belated sparrows.

After a ten minutes' walk the stranger turned into a side road which led
to only one place, the Eagle Inn, an old roadside hostelry known now as
the headquarters for pothunters from the Philadelphia game market and
the battleground of many a cock-fight.

Gallegher knew the place well. He and his young companions had often
stopped there when out chestnutting on holidays in the autumn.

The son of the man who kept it had often accompanied them on their
excursions, and though the boys of the city streets considered him a
dumb lout, they respected him somewhat owing to his inside knowledge of
dog and cock-fights.

The stranger entered the inn at a side door, and Gallegher, reaching it
a few minutes later, let him go for the time being, and set about
finding his occasional playmate, young Keppler.

Keppler's offspring was found in the woodshed.

"Tain't hard to guess what brings you out here," said the
tavern-keeper's son, with a grin; "it's the fight."

"What fight?" asked Gallegher, unguardedly.

"What fight? Why, _the_ fight," returned his companion, with the
slow contempt of superior knowledge. "It's to come off here to-night.
You knew that as well as