he two men faced each other the crowd became so
still that, save for the beating of the rain upon the shingled roof and
the stamping of a horse in one of the stalls, the place was as silent as
a church.

"Time," shouted the master of ceremonies.

The two men sprang into a posture of defense, which was lost as quickly
as it was taken, one great arm shot out like a piston-rod; there was the
sound of bare fists beating on naked flesh; there was an exultant
indrawn gasp of savage pleasure and relief from the crowd, and the great
fight had begun.

How the fortunes of war rose and fell, and changed and rechanged that
night, is an old story to those who listen to such stories; and those
who do not will be glad to be spared the telling of it. It was, they
say, one of the bitterest fights between two men that this country has
ever known.

But all that is of interest here is that after an hour of this
desperate, brutal business the champion ceased to be the favorite; the
man whom he had taunted and bullied, and for whom the public had but
little sympathy, was proving himself a likely winner, and under his
cruel blows, as sharp and clean as those from a cutlass, his opponent
was rapidly giving way.

The men about the ropes were past all control now; they drowned
Keppler's petitions for silence with oaths and in inarticulate shouts of
anger, as if the blows had fallen upon them, and in mad rejoicings. They
swept from one end of the ring to the other, with every muscle leaping
in unison with those of the man they favored, and when a New York
correspondent muttered over his shoulder that this would be the biggest
sporting surprise since the Heenan-Sayers fight, Mr. Dwyer nodded his
head sympathetically in assent.

In the excitement and tumult it is doubtful if any heard the three
quickly repeated blows that fell heavily from the outside upon the big
doors of the barn. If they did, it was already too late to mend matters,
for the door fell, torn from its hinges, and as it fell a captain of
police sprang into the light from out of the storm, with his lieutenants
and their men crowding close at his shoulder.

In the panic and stampede that followed, several of the men stood as
helplessly immovable as though they had seen a ghost; others made a mad
rush into the arms of the officers and were beaten back against the
ropes of the ring; others dived headlong into the stalls, among the
horses and cattle, and still others shoved the