.
He was laid on his back; he was laid on his stomach; he was respectfully
pounded and kneaded, from head to foot, by the knuckles of accomplished
practitioners. He came out of it all, sleek, clear rosy, beautiful. He
returned to the hotel, and took up the writing materials--and behold
the intolerable indecision seized him again, declining to be washed out!
This time he laid it all to Anne. "That infernal woman will be the ruin
of me," said Geoffrey, taking up his hat. "I must try the dumb-bells."

The pursuit of the new remedy for stimulating a sluggish brain took him
to a public house, kept by the professional pedestrian who had the honor
of training him when he contended at Athletic Sports.

"A private room and the dumb-bells!" cried Geoffrey. "The heaviest you
have got."

He stripped himself of his upper clothing, and set to work, with the
heavy weights in each hand, waving them up and down, and backward and
forward, in every attainable variety o f movement, till his magnificent
muscles seemed on the point of starting through his sleek skin. Little
by little his animal spirits roused themselves. The strong
exertion intoxicated the strong man. In sheer excitement he swore
cheerfully--invoking thunder and lightning, explosion and blood, in
return for the compliments profusely paid to him by the pedestrian and
the pedestrian's son. "Pen, ink, and paper!" he roared, when he could
use the dumb-bells no longer. "My mind's made up; I'll write, and have
done with it!" He sat down to his writing on the spot; actually finished
the letter; another minute would have dispatched it to the post--and, in
that minute, the maddening indecision took possession of him once more.
He opened the letter again, read it over again, and tore it up again.
"I'm out of my mind!" cried Geoffrey, fixing his big bewildered blue
eyes fiercely on the professor who trained him. "Thunder and lightning!
Explosion and blood! Send for Crouch."

Crouch (known and respected wherever English manhood is known and
respected) was a retired prize-fighter. He appeared with the third
and last remedy for clearing the mind known to the Honorable Geoffrey
Delamayn--namely, two pair of boxing-gloves in a carpet-bag.

The gentleman and the prize-fighter put on the gloves, and faced each
other in the classically correct posture of pugilistic defense. "None of
your play, mind!" growled Geoffrey. "Fight, you beggar, as if you were
in the Ring again with orders to win