n'
I'll put up a sack of oats, an' we'll call it Tom Ford; an' ye must hit
that sack wi' yer fist every day wan hundred times, twenty-five on the
top side and siventy-five on the bottom side for the undercut is worth
more than the uppercut anny day; an' when ye've done that, ye're making
magic, and at the end of the moon ye'll be able to lick Tom Ford."

Jim began with all his ten-year-old vigour to make the necessary magic,
and had received Bill's unqualified approval until one day he appeared
chewing something given him by one of the men as a joke. Jim paused
before Bill and spat out a brown fluid.

"Fwhat are ye doing?" said Bill; then to his disgust, he found that Jim,
inspired probably by his own example, was chewing tobacco.

"Spit it out, ye little divil, an' never agin do that. If ye do that
three times before ye're twenty-one, ye'll make a spell that will break
you, an' ye'll never lick Tom Ford."

Thus, with no high motive, Kenna was in many ways, the guardian of the
child. Coarse, brutish, and fierce among men, he was ever good to the
boy and respectful to his mother; and he rounded out his teaching by the
doctrine: "If ye give yer word as a mahn, ye must not let all hell
prevent ye holding to it." And he whispered in a dreadful tone that sent
a chill through the youngster's blood: "It'll bring the bone-rot on ye
if ye fail; it always does."

It is unfortunate that we cannot number the town school principal as a
large maker of Jim's mind. Jim went to school and the teacher did the
best he could. He learned to read, to write and to figure, but books
irked him and held no lure. His joy was in the stable yard and the barn
where dwelt those men of muscle and of animal mind; where the boxing
gloves were in nightly use, the horses in daily sight, and the world of
sport in ring or on turf was the only world worth any man's devotion.

There were a dozen other persons who had influence in the shaping of the
life and mind of Little Jim Hartigan; but there was one that
overpowered, that far outweighed, that almost negatived the rest; that
was his mother. She could scarcely read, and all the reading she ever
tried to do was in her Bible. Filled with the vision of what she wished
her boy to be--a minister of Christ--Kitty sent him to the public
school, but the colour of his mind was given at home. She told him the
stories of the Man of Galilee, and on Sundays, hand in hand, they went
to the Presbyterian Church, to l