ed a little. "Mad as a hornet. Jerry blocked the game."

"How--?"

"Dad offered Clancy five thousand and his share of the gate money to
quit."

"Clancy refused?"

"He was very white about it. He sent the message over to Jerry."

"And Jerry?"

"The boy doubled any amount dad offered if Clancy would go on. Clancy
stands to win fifteen thousand. Dad quit. I told him Jerry had made up
his mind. He realizes it now."

"Fifteen thousand! Clancy will work for it."

Jack smiled grimly. "I think Jerry wants him to."

The boy was mad--clean mad.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FIGHT

But the madness of the moment had gotten into my blood and Jack's. The
fight was going to take place. We were glad of it. We felt the
magnetism of the crowd, the pulse of its excitement, and, as impatient
as those around us, eagerly awaited developments. The seconds and
trainers had hardly clambered into Clancy's corner when Clancy
himself, followed by Terry Riley, appeared and leaped into the ring.
The crowd roared approval and he bowed right and left, waving his
hands and nodding to acquaintances whom he recognized at the
ring-side. He wore a pale blue dressing-gown and though broad of
shoulder seemed not even so tall as Sagorski, but he had a bullet head
which at the cerebellum joined his thick neck, without indentation, in
a straight line and his arms reached almost to his knees--gorilla of a
man--a superbrute. I caught a glimpse of Marcia watching him intently,
and tried to read her thoughts. She examined him with the critical
gaze which she might have given a hackney at a horse show.

Jerry's appearance with Flynn a moment later was the signal for
another outburst from the crowd--not so long a greeting nor so
prolonged a one as that which had greeted Clancy, but warm enough to
make the boy feel that he was not without friends in the house. His
face was a little pale but he smiled cheerfully enough when he
reached the ring. He shook hands with Gannon, whom he had met at
Finnegan's, and then, with a show of real enjoyment, with
Clancy--conversing with a composure that left nothing to be desired.

The crowd, like Jack and me, was comparing them. Jerry's six feet two
topped the sailor by more than two inches, though I believe the latter
would have a few pounds of extra weight.

"Big rascal, ain't he?" the sportsman in the adjoining box commented.

"Yep," grunted the stolid one. "But too leggy. Clancy'll eat him
alive--_eat him alive_