said, and
there was something almost pathetic in his voice. "You're dead right,
Anthony! All you have to do is to stick opportunity before a man long
enough and he's bound to chuck a hammerlock into her and slam her down
to the mat for keeps! So that's settled, and we don't have to do any
experimenting with human subjects. Or if you do have to have a live one
to work on, wait till we get home and we'll take Wilkins, Anthony!
That'd be better, anyway."

He paused, eying his old friend with deep anxiety. Anthony Fry, having
thrown back his head, laughed heartily.

"Johnson," said he, "the whole trouble with that poor old head of yours
is that it is absolutely without the power of visualization! It knows
the wool business; it makes thousands and thousands of dollars out of
the wool business; but to save its very life it cannot reach out into
the abstract!"

"It doesn't want to reach into the abstract!"

"Well, it should, because it will grow more and more stodgy if it
doesn't," Mr. Fry said complacently. "Good gracious, Johnson! Coming to
life! Just consider what may be coming to this seat!"

"I don't dare!" Johnson Boller said honestly.

"An old man, perhaps--one who fancies his opportunities all past and
done for. What more vitally interesting than thrusting opportunity upon
such a man, Johnson?"

"So far as I'm concerned, anything under the sun and----"

"Or perhaps a middle-aged failure," Anthony rambled on. "A man just past
the age when hope is richest--a man who has seen his chances come and
go. I don't know, Johnson, but I rather believe that I'm hoping for a
middle-aged man."

"Yes, one that's weak enough to gag before he can yell for the police,"
Johnson Boller grunted. "Now, Anthony, before you----"

"Or best of all, perhaps, an average young man," smiled the
experimenter. "That would really be the most interesting sort of
subject, Johnson--just a plain chap, not fully matured, not soured by
disappointment nor rendered too sophisticated by contact with the world.
On the whole, I really hope that a young man is coming!"

And now, for a time, Johnson Boller said nothing at all. There was
always the chance that Anthony might work it out of his system in
talk--there was the other chance, growing rosier and rosier by the
minute, that the odd chair had not been sold at all.

It was rather queer, when one considered that seats for this particular
star bout had been at a premium for a week, but it was nev