lly inscrutable face to the tense
interest and enjoyment in Bobby Ogden's features, and back again.
Hogarty's hard eyes could be very hard--hard and chilling as chipped
steel--and they were that now. He was only just beginning to awake to
a realization of that profaned floor, but the smile upon Denny's
mouth neither disappeared nor stiffened in embarrassment before that
forbidding countenance. Instead he held out his hand--a big,
long-fingered, hard-palmed hand--toward the ex-lightweight proprietor.
And when he began to speak there was nothing but simple interrogation
in the almost ponderous voice.

"I--I reckon," he said slowly, "that you must be Jesse Hogarty--Mr.
Jesse Hogarty?"

Flash Hogarty looked at him, looked at that outstretched hand--looked
back at his steady eyes and the smile that parted his lips. And
Hogarty did a thing that made even Bobby Ogden gasp. He bowed
gracefully and reached out and silently shook hands. When he spoke,
instead of the perfectly enunciated, picturesquely profane rebuke
which the silk-shirted boy was waiting to hear, his voice was even
smoother and softer, and choicer of intonation than usual.

"Quite so," he stated. "Quite free from error or embarrassing mistake,
sir. I am Mr. Jesse Hogarty. You, however, if I may be permitted that
assertion, have me rather at a disadvantage, sir."

He bowed again, once more elaborately graceful. Bobby Ogden hugged his
knees beneath the table, for he knew from the very suavity of that
reply all that was brewing. Hogarty's silken voice went on.

"Regrettable, sir, and most awkward. You, no doubt, have no objection,
however, to making the introduction complete?"

The smile still hovered upon Denny's lips. Ogden noted, though, that
it had changed. And he realized, too, that it had not been a
particularly mirthful smile, even in the first place. Again Young
Denny's eyes met those of the other boy for one moment.

"I'm Denny Bolton," he replied just as deliberately. "Denny Bolton,
from Boltonwood--or--or I reckon you've never heard of that place. I'm
down from the hill country, back in the north," he supplemented.

Hogarty turned away--turned back to the green-topped table and played
the double-blank with delicate precision.

"Of course," he agreed softly. "Quite right--quite right! And--er--may
I inquire if it was something of importance--something directly
concerning me--which has resulted in this neighborly call?"

He did not so much as li