rence.

The audience was no less startled. There was audible gasping. The
newspaper men looked at each other with a wild surmise and conjured up
pleasant pictures of their sporting editors receiving this sensational
item of news later on over the telephone. The two wise guys, continuing
to pursue Mr. Butler with their dislike, emitted loud and raucous
laughs, and one of them, forming his hands into a megaphone, urged the
fallen warrior to go away and get a rep. As for Sally, she was conscious
of a sudden, fierce, cave-womanly rush of happiness which swept away
completely the sickening qualms of the last few minutes. Her teeth
were clenched and her eyes blazed with joyous excitement. She looked
at Ginger yearningly, longing to forget a gentle upbringing and shout
congratulation to him. She was proud of him. And mingled with the pride
was a curious feeling that was almost fear. This was not the mild and
amiable young man whom she was wont to mother through the difficulties
of a world in which he was unfitted to struggle for himself. This was a
new Ginger, a stranger to her.

On the rare occasions on which he had been knocked down in the past,
it had been Bugs Butler's canny practice to pause for a while and rest
before rising and continuing the argument, but now he was up almost
before he had touched the boards, and the satire of the second wise guy,
who had begun to saw the air with his hand and count loudly, lost its
point. It was only too plain that Mr. Butler's motto was that a man
may be down, but he is never out. And, indeed, the knock-down had been
largely a stumble. Bugs Butler's educated feet, which had carried him
unscathed through so many contests, had for this single occasion managed
to get themselves crossed just as Ginger's blow landed, and it was to
his lack of balance rather than the force of the swing that his downfall
had been due.

"Time!" he snarled, casting a malevolent side-glance at his manager.
"Like hell it's time!"

And in a whirlwind of flying gloves he flung himself upon Ginger,
driving him across the ring, while Mr. Burrowes, watch in hand, stared
with dropping jaw. If Ginger had seemed a new Ginger to Sally, still
more did this seem a new Bugs Butler to Mr. Burrowes, and the manager
groaned in spirit. Coolness, skill and science--these had been the
qualities in his protege which had always so endeared him to Mr. Lester
Burrowes and had so enriched their respective bank accounts: and now,