old and slouchy. The uppers of
his shoes were too weak to carry the heavy re-soling that was itself
of no recent date. And his cotton shirt, a cheap, two shilling affair,
showed a frayed collar and ineradicable paint stains.

But it was Tom King's face that advertised him unmistakably for what he
was. It was the face of a typical prize-fighter; of one who had put in
long years of service in the squared ring and, by that means, developed
and emphasized all the marks of the fighting beast. It was distinctly a
lowering countenance, and, that no feature of it might escape notice, it
was clean-shaven. The lips were shapeless and constituted a mouth harsh
to excess, that was like a gash in his face. The jaw was aggressive,
brutal, heavy. The eyes, slow of movement and heavy-lidded, were almost
expressionless under the shaggy, indrawn brows. Sheer animal that he
was, the eyes were the most animal-like feature about him. They were
sleepy, lion-like--the eyes of a fighting animal. The forehead slanted
quickly back to the hair, which, clipped close, showed every bump of a
villainous-looking head. A nose twice broken and moulded variously
by countless blows, and a cauliflower ear, permanently swollen and
distorted to twice its size, completed his adornment, while the beard,
fresh-shaven as it was, sprouted in the skin and gave the face a
blue-black stain.

Altogether, it was the face of a man to be afraid of in a dark alley or
lonely place. And yet Tom King was not a criminal, nor had he ever done
anything criminal. Outside of brawls, common to his walk in life, he had
harmed no one. Nor had he ever been known to pick a quarrel. He was a
professional, and all the fighting brutishness of him was reserved
for his professional appearances. Outside the ring he was slow-going,
easy-natured, and, in his younger days, when money was flush, too
open-handed for his own good. He bore no grudges and had few enemies.
Fighting was a business with him. In the ring he struck to hurt, struck
to maim, struck to destroy; but there was no animus in it. It was
a plain business proposition. Audiences assembled and paid for the
spectacle of men knocking each other out. The winner took the big end of
the purse. When Tom King faced the Woolloomoolloo Gouger, twenty years
before, he knew that the Gouger's jaw was only four months healed after
having been broken in a Newcastle bout. And he had played for that jaw
and broken it again in the ninth round, n