y
interested in that sort of thing, but it was curious how he had
misjudged her tastes; she seemed so ethereal, so devoted to the
gentler things of life, that he had not thought it possible she could
care for the rugged art he loved, which at times, as I knew, verged
upon the brutal. I mentioned with a smile that there remained in all
of us, women as well as men, some relics of the age of stone.

"Of course," he assented cheerfully, "I knew she wasn't namby-pamby.
It's rather nice of her, I think, to take so much interest."

A few days after that Jerry left me and I knew that Briar Hills was
closed again.

The events which were to follow came upon me with startling
unexpectedness. Scarcely two weeks had passed since Jerry's departure
and I had hardly settled back into my routine at the Manor, where I
was trying again to take up the lost threads of my work, when a
message came over the wire from Jack Ballard asking me to come down to
New York to visit him for a few days. I inferred from what he said
that he wanted to see me about Jerry, and, of course, I lost no time
in getting to the city and to his apartment, where I found him before
his mirror, tying his cravat.

"Pope, my boy, I knew you'd come. Just itching for an excuse anyway,
weren't you? But you needn't look so alarmed. Jerry's all right. He
hasn't even run off; with a chorus lady or founded a home for
non-swearing truckmen."

"Well what _has_ he done?" I asked.

"Not much--merely engaged to become one of the principals in a prize
fight in Madison Square Garden."

"Jerry! I can't believe you."

"It's quite true. Sit down, my boy. Have you break-fasted yet?"

"Hours ago at the Manor."

"Just reproach! But the early worm gets caught by the bird, you know.
I never get up--"

"Tell me," I broke in impatiently, "where you heard this extravagant
tomfoolery?"

"From the extravagant tomfool himself. Jerry told me yesterday. I'm
afraid there's no doubt about the matter. The articles of agreement
are signed, the money, five thousand a side, is in the hands of the
stakeholder--one Mike Finnegan, a friend of Flynn's, who keeps a
saloon upon the Bowery."

"Preposterous! It hasn't come out, the newspapers--"

"They're full enough of it as it is. Jerry's opponent is a very
prominent pug--an aspirant for the heavyweight title, no less a one
than Jack Clancy, otherwise known as 'The Terrible Sailor, Champion of
the Navy.'"

"But your father--the public--! I