interested in?"

"That's right. He's going up against the lightweight champ. Lew Lucas is
the lightweight champ. He's a bird!"

"Yes?" said Sally. This youth had a way of looking at her with his head
cocked on one side as though he expected her to say something.

"Yes, sir!" said the stripling with emphasis. "Lew Lucas is a hot
sketch. He used to live on the next street to me," he added as clinching
evidence of his hero's prowess. "I've seen his old mother as close as
I am to you. Say, I seen her a hundred times. Is any stiff of a Bugs
Butler going to lick a fellow like that?"

"It doesn't seem likely."

"You spoke it!" said the lad crisply, striking unsuccessfully at a fly
which had settled on the blotting-paper.

There was a pause. Sally started to rise.

"And there's another thing," said the office-boy, loath to close the
subject. "Can Bugs Butler make a hundred and thirty-five ringside
without being weak?"

"It sounds awfully difficult."

"They say he's clever." The expert laughed satirically. "Well,
what's that going to get him? The poor fish can't punch a hole in a
nut-sundae."

"You don't seem to like Mr. Butler."

"Oh, I've nothing against him," said the office-boy magnanimously. "I'm
only saying he's no licence to be mixing it with Lew Lucas."

Sally got up. Absorbing as this chat on current form was, more important
matters claimed her attention.

"How shall I find my brother when I get to White Plains?" she asked.

"Oh, anybody'll show you the way to the training-camp. If you hurry,
there's a train you can make now."

"Thank you very much."

"You're welcome."

He opened the door for her with an old-world politeness which disuse had
rendered a little rusty: then, with an air of getting back to business
after a pleasant but frivolous interlude, he took up the paper-weights
once more and placed the ruler with nice care on his upturned chin.

2

Fillmore heaved a sigh of relief and began to sidle from the room. It
was a large room, half barn, half gymnasium. Athletic appliances of
various kinds hung on the walls and in the middle there was a wide
roped-off space, around which a small crowd had distributed itself with
an air of expectancy. This is a commercial age, and the days when a
prominent pugilist's training activities used to be hidden from the
public gaze are over. To-day, if the public can lay its hands on fifty
cents, it may come and gaze its fill. This afternoon, plutocr