ar in which the latter had steadfastly refused to fight. Lucky
in having that fox, Devereau, for a manager, cunning enough to decoy
Fanchette into the ring.

But in the main they swarmed to his standard. The king was dead. And
he had lingered tediously, at that.

The newspapers welcomed Perry avidly. Fanchette as a subject for copy
had long been profitless as a sucked orange. Here again was the
novelty of newness and a personality of exceeding richness and color.
Or at least so ran report. No crack men had been sent out to cover the
affair. That such an astounding thing as the rise of a new champion
threatened had been foreseen by few. In the East Perry Blair had been
little known and reckoned a third-rater. But those who had been West
to see the bout which ended so suddenly brought back fragments which
put a nice edge upon the imaginations of the sporting editors. And
immediately, when in reality there was no need, had begun the
well-known process of gilding the lily.

They featured his out-of-doors life; the romance of the country boy
again. They dwelt upon his modesty, his extreme reticence, his
hardihood and rigid habit of clean living. They twanged all the
strings that had ever sounded before in honor of other champions. And
Broadway--that certain ring which can give you off-hand the exact
poundage of Nelson when he met Gans, or the fastest time in which the
Futurity has ever been run, or the name of the latest female whose
intimate measurements have just been declared by one of a half dozen
greatest living artists to be a reproach to the Venus de Milo, all
without wrinkling its forehead in thought--that portion of Broadway, to
use its own expression, ate it up.

And yet when Perry Blair came East an odd thing happened. When he came
East and they found that every word which they had read with such
approval was the literal truth, and not just the industry of an astute
press-agent, they were nonplused. Even suspicious, I believe. And
outraged in the end.

It must have been a shock to them to find in Perry Blair a sportsman,
when they had expected a dead game sport. They had been waiting to lay
at his feet (at a price) the spoils due a conqueror, spoils neither
savory nor shining, but those which other champions had demanded and
relished, until they waked to find themselves champion no more. And
when Blair ignored these things they distrusted him.

From the outset his reticence, which had been