od standing, he
took his seat amid a dense fog of tobacco smoke and peered around him
for Frank Walsh and his customer. At length he discerned Walsh's
stalwart figure at the right hand of a veritable giant, whose square jaw
and tip-tilted nose would have proclaimed the customer, even though
Walsh had not assiduously plied him with cigars and engaged him
continually in animated conversation. They were seated well down toward
the ring, while Morris found a place directly opposite them and watched
their every movement. When they laughed Morris scowled, and once when
the big man slapped his thigh in uproarious appreciation of one of
Walsh's stories Morris fairly turned green with envy.

Morris watched with a jaundiced eye the manner in which Frank Walsh
radiated good humor. Not only did Walsh hand out cigars to the big man,
but also he proffered them to the person who sat next to him on the
other side. This man Morris recognized as the drummer who had been in
Wasserbauer's with Frank on the previous day.

"Letting him in on it, too," Morris said to himself. "What show do I
stand?"

The first of the preliminary bouts began. The combatants were announced
as Pig Flanagan and Tom Evans, the Welsh coal-miner. It seemed to Morris
that he had seen Evans somewhere before, but as this was his initiation
into the realms of pugilism he concluded that it was merely a chance
resemblance and dismissed the matter from his mind.

The opening bout more than realized Morris' conception of the sport's
brutality, for Pig Flanagan was what the _cognoscenti_ call a good
bleeder, and during the first second of the fight he fulfilled his
reputation at the instance of a light tap from his opponent's left.
There are some people who cannot stand the sight of blood; Morris was
one of them, and the drummer on Frank Walsh's right was another. Both he
and Morris turned pale, but the big man on Walsh's left roared his
approbation.

"Eat him up!" he bellowed, and at every fresh hemorrhage from Mr.
Flanagan he rocked and swayed in an ecstasy of enjoyment. For three
crimson rounds Pig Flanagan and Tom Evans continued their contest, but
even a good bleeder must run dry eventually, and in the first half of
the fourth round Pig took the count.

By this time the arena was swimming in Morris' nauseated vision, while,
as for the drummer on Frank's right, he closed his eyes and wiped a
clammy perspiration from his forehead. The club meeting proceeded,
howev