now your own business best. Up you jump. One
hundred and fifty-one, minus two, 149--12lbs. difference, but youth and
condition on the other scale. Well, the sooner we get to work the
better, for I wish to catch the seven o'clock express at Hellifield.
Twenty three-minute rounds, with one-minute intervals, and Queensberry
rules. Those are the conditions, are they not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very good, then--we may go across."

The two combatants had overcoats thrown over their shoulders, and the
whole party, backers, fighters, seconds, and the referee filed out of
the room. A police inspector was waiting for them in the road. He had
a note-book in his hand--that terrible weapon which awes even the
London cabman.

"I must take your names, gentlemen, in case it should be necessary to
proceed for breach of peace."

"You don't mean to stop the fight?" cried Armitage, in a passion of
indignation. "I'm Mr. Armitage, of Croxley, and this is Mr. Wilson, and
we'll be responsible that all is fair and as it should be."

"I'll take the names in case it should be necessary to proceed," said
the inspector, impassively.

"But you know me well."

"If you was a dook or even a judge it would be all' the same," said the
inspector. "It's the law, and there's an end. I'll not take upon
myself to stop the fight, seeing that gloves are to be used, but I'll
take the names of all concerned. Silas Craggs, Robert Montgomery,
Edward Barton, James Stapleton, of London. Who seconds Silas Craggs?"

"I do," said the woman. "Yes, you can stare, but it's my job, and no
one else's. Anastasia's the name--four a's."

"Craggs?"

"Johnson--Anastasia Johnson. If you jug him you can jug me."

"Who talked of juggin', ye fool?" growled the Master. "Coom on, Mr.
Armitage, for I'm fair sick o' this loiterin'."

The inspector fell in with the procession, and proceeded, as they walked
up the hill, to bargain in his official capacity for a front seat, where
he could safeguard the interests of the law, and in his private
capacity to lay out thirty shillings at seven to one with Mr. Armitage.
Through the door they passed, down a narrow lane walled with a dense
bank of humanity, up a wooden ladder to a platform, over a rope which
was slung waist-high from four corner-stakes, and then Montgomery
realised that he was in that ring in which his immediate destiny was to
be worked out. On the stake at one corner there hung a blue-and-white
streamer.