ength than he
had bargained for, and now the man's life hung on a thread.

The unconscious pugilist was carried to an adjoining room. Two
physicians were in attendance upon him, and at first the reports were
most gloomy, but towards daylight the Bruiser learned with relief that
the chances were in favor of his opponent.

The Bruiser had been urged to fly, but he was a man of strong common
sense, and he thoroughly understood the futility of flight. His face
and his form were too well known all around the country. It would have
been impossible for him to escape, even if he had tried to do so.

When the Yorkshire Chicken recovered, the Bruiser's friends laughed at
his resolve to quit the ring, but they could not shake it. The money he
had won in his last fight, together with what he had accumulated
before--for he was a frugal man--was enough to keep him for the rest of
his days, and he resolved to return to the Border town where he was
born, and where doubtless his fame had preceded him.

He buckled his guineas in a belt around him, and with a stout stick in
his hand he left London for the North. He was a strong and healthy
young man, and had not given way to dissipation, as so many
prizefighters had done before, and will again. He had a horror of a
cramped and confined, seat in a stage coach. He loved the free air of
the heights and the quiet stillness of the valleys.

It was in the days of highwaymen, and travelling by coach was not
considered any too safe. The Bruiser was afraid of no man that lived,
if he met him in the open with a stick in his hand, or with nature's
weapons, but he feared the muzzle of a pistol held at his head in the
dark by a man with a mask over his face. So he buckled his belt around
him with all his worldly gear in gold, took his own almost forgotten
name, Abel Trenchon, set his back to the sun and his face to the north
wind, and journeyed on foot along the king's highway. He stopped at
night in the wayside inns, taking up his quarters before the sun had
set, and leaving them when it was broad daylight in the morning. He
disputed his reckonings like a man who must needs count the pennies,
and no one suspected the sturdy wayfarer of carrying a fortune around
his body.

As his face turned toward the North his thought went to the Border town
where he had spent his childhood. His father and mother were dead, and
he doubted now if anyone there remembered him, or would have a welcome
for him. Ne