t you?"

"_Buddy!_ Oh, Buddy--" It was a yearning cry; Gray's streaked, swollen
features were grotesquely contorted. "You won't be mad with me, will
you?"

"Want to fight any more?"

The victor groaned. "My God, _no!_ You nearly killed me."

This time Buddy managed to gain his feet. "Then I reckon I'll--go to
bed. I feel purty rotten."

Gray laughed aloud, in his deep relief. "Righto! And after I've phoned
for a doctor, if you don't mind, I'll crawl in with you."

CHAPTER XXII

On the morning after the fight Mallow knocked at Gray's door, then in
answer to an indistinct and irritable command to be gone, he made
himself known.

"It's me, Governor. And I've got Exhibit A."

"Really?" came the startled query. There was a stir from within, the
lock snapped and the door opened.

"I've got a little friend here that I want you to--" Mallow paused
inside the threshold, his mouth fell open, he stared in frank
amazement. "Sweet spirits of niter!" he gasped. "What happened to
_you?_"

"I was playing tag in the hall with some other old men, and one of them
struck me."

"My God, you're a sight!" Mallow remained petrified. "I never saw a
worse mess."

"Come in and close the door. I am vain, therefore I have a certain
shyness about exposing my beauty to the curious gaze. Pardon me if I
seat myself first; I find it more comfortable to sit than to stand, to
recline than to sit." Stiffly the speaker let himself into an
upholstered divan and fitted the cushions to his aches and his pains,
his bruises and his abrasions. He sighed miserably. His features were
discolored, shapeless; his lips were cut; strips of adhesive tape held
the edges of a wound together; his left hand was tightly bandaged and
the room reeked with the odor of liniment.

"You've been hit with a safe, or something," Mallow declared.
"Evidences of some blunt instrument, as the newspapers say; maybe a
pair of chain tongs."

"Blunt and heavy, yes. Buddy Briskow and I had an argument--"

"That big bum? Did he lay it on you like that? Say, he's got the
makings of a champ!"

"Pride impels me to state that he got the worst of it. He is scarcely
presentable, while I--"

"Your side won?"

"It did. Now, where is the boy?"

"He's outside." Without shifting his astonished gaze, Mallow raised his
voice and cried, "Hey, Bennie!" The door opened, a trim, diminutive
figure entered. "Bennie, mit my friend Colonel Gray."

The youngster, a boy of indetermi