oung Pronto went to one corner and then the other, shaking hands with
the principals and dropping down out of the ring. The challenges
went on. Ever Youth climbed through the ropes--Youth unknown, but
insatiable--crying out to mankind that with strength and skill it would
match issues with the winner. A few years before, in his own heyday
of invincibleness, Tom King would have been amused and bored by these
preliminaries. But now he sat fascinated, unable to shake the vision
of Youth from his eyes. Always were these youngsters rising up in the
boxing game, springing through the ropes and shouting their defiance;
and always were the old uns going down before them. They climbed to
success over the bodies of the old uns. And ever they came, more and
more youngsters--Youth unquenchable and irresistible--and ever they put
the old uns away, themselves becoming old uns and travelling the same
downward path, while behind them, ever pressing on them, was Youth
eternal--the new babies, grown lusty and dragging their elders down,
with behind them more babies to the end of time--Youth that must have
its will and that will never die.

King glanced over to the press box and nodded to Morgan, of the
Sportsman, and Corbett, of the Referee. Then he held out his hands,
while Sid Sullivan and Charley Bates, his seconds, slipped on his gloves
and laced them tight, closely watched by one of Sandel's seconds, who
first examined critically the tapes on King's knuckles. A second of his
own was in Sandel's corner, performing a like office. Sandel's trousers
were pulled off, and, as he stood up, his sweater was skinned off over
his head. And Tom King, looking, saw Youth incarnate, deep-chested,
heavy-thewed, with muscles that slipped and slid like live things under
the white satin skin. The whole body was a-crawl with life, and Tom King
knew that it was a life that had never oozed its freshness out through
the aching pores during the long fights wherein Youth paid its toll and
departed not quite so young as when it entered.

The two men advanced to meet each other, and, as the gong sounded and
the seconds clattered out of the ring with the folding stools, they
shook hands and instantly took their fighting attitudes. And instantly,
like a mechanism of steel and springs balanced on a hair trigger, Sandel
was in and out and in again, landing a left to the eyes, a right to the
ribs, ducking a counter, dancing lightly away and dancing menacingly
bac