out.
I lasted the twenty rounds, an' I wanta tell you he's got some marks to
remember me by. If he ain't got a couple of knuckles broke in the left
hand I'm a geezer.--Here, feel my head here. Swollen, eh? Sure thing. He
hit that more times than he's wishin' he had right now. But, oh, what a
lacin'! What a lacin'! I never had anything like it before. The Chicago
Terror, they call 'm. I take my hat off to 'm. He's some bear. But
I could a-made 'm take the count if I'd ben in condition an' had my
wind.--Oh! Ouch! Watch out! It's like a boil!"

Fumbling at his waistband, Saxon's hand had come in contact with a
brightly inflamed surface larger than a soup plate.

"That's from the kidney blows," Billy explained. "He was a regular devil
at it. 'Most every clench, like clock work, down he'd chop one on me. It
got so sore I was wincin'... until I got groggy an' didn't know much of
anything. It ain't a knockout blow, you know, but it's awful wearin' in
a long fight. It takes the starch out of you."

When his knees were bared, Saxon could see the skin across the knee-caps
was broken and gone.

"The skin ain't made to stand a heavy fellow like me on the knees," he
volunteered. "An' the rosin in the canvas cuts like Sam Hill."

The tears were in Saxon's eyes, and she could have cried over the
manhandled body of her beautiful sick boy.

As she carried his pants across the room to hang them up, a jingle of
money came from them. He called her back, and from the pocket drew forth
a handful of silver.

"We needed the money, we needed the money," he kept muttering, as
he vainly tried to count the coins; and Saxon knew that his mind was
wandering again.

It cut her to the heart, for she could not but remember the harsh
thoughts that had threatened her loyalty during the week past. After
all, Billy, the splendid physical man, was only a boy, her boy. And
he had faced and endured all this terrible punishment for her, for the
house and the furniture that were their house and furniture. He said so,
now, when he scarcely knew what he said. He said "WE needed the money."
She was not so absent from his thoughts as she had fancied. Here, down
to the naked tie-ribs of his soul, when he was half unconscious, the
thought of her persisted, was uppermost. We needed the money. WE!

The tears were trickling down her checks as she bent over him, and it
seemed she had never loved him so much as now.

"Here; you count," he said, abandoning the