.

"Anthony!" Johnson Boller said suddenly.

"Well?"

"Don't speak to this guy! I don't like his looks!"

"Bah!"

"And this gang behind us is doing everything but watch the fight," Mr.
Boller whispered on. "If you try anything funny on this fellow that's
coming, he's likely to put up a yell of some kind--and once a fight
starts in this box these three behind are coming in."

"Johnson, don't be absurd," Anthony smiled. "Get over in the odd seat; I
want the chap next to me so that I can have a good look at him."

"Will you remember that I said you were going to start trouble?" Johnson
inquired hotly.

"I'll remember anything you like, only get over into that odd seat," Mr.
Fry muttered, as the stranger came closer. "Ah, he's hardly more than a
boy."

"Yes, he's a young thug!" Johnson Boller informed him in parting. "He's
a young gang-leader, Anthony--look at the walk! Look at the way he has
that cap pulled down over one eye! Look at----"

Anthony Fry, obviously, would have heard him as well had he been seated
on the steps of Colorado's State capitol. Intellectual countenance
alight, the mildly eccentric Anthony--really the sanest and most
delightful of men except when these abstract notions came to him--was
wholly absorbed in the newcomer.

Rather than stare directly he turned toward the ring as the young man in
the long coat crowded into the box and settled down with a little puff,
but one who knew him as well as Johnson Boller could feel Anthony's eyes
looking past his lean right cheek and taking in every detail of theory's
prospective victim.

Not that he was a particularly savage-looking creature on closer
inspection, however. The cheap cloth cap and the shabby long coat--heavy
enough for a typhoon when there was the merest suggestion of drizzle
outdoors--gave one that impression at first, but second examination
showed him to be really rather mild.

He seemed to be about twenty. His clothing, from the overcoat to the
trousers and the well-worn shoes, indicated that he came from no very
elevated plane of society. His features, which seemed decidedly boyish
among some of the faces present, were decidedly good. His hair needed
cutting and had needed it, for some time, and he was tremendously
interested in the star bout. Elbows on the rail, cap pulled down to
shade his eyes, the youngster's whole excited soul seemed centered in
the ring.

So at a rather easy guess Mr. Boller concluded that he was a mech