happen. Perhaps
that's the way it was with me, except that there was no aching. When I
saw those legs flying past, I merely stuck my stick in between. I didn't
know I was going to do it. I just did it. Timothy McManus was no more
surprised than I was."

"Did they catch you?" Billy asked.

"Do I look as if they did? I was never so scared in my life. Timothy
McManus himself couldn't have caught me that day. But what happened
afterward? I heard they had a fearful roughhouse, but I couldn't stop to
see."

It was not until a quarter of an hour had passed, during which Billy
described the fight, that introductions took place. Mark Hall was their
visitor's name, and he lived in a bungalow among the Carmel pines.

"But how did you ever find your way to Bierce's Cove?" he was curious to
know. "Nobody ever dreams of it from the road."

"So that's its name?" Saxon said.

"It's the name we gave it. One of our crowd camped here one summer,
and we named it after him. I'll take a cup of that coffee, if you don't
mind."--This to Saxon. "And then I'll show your husband around. We're
pretty proud of this cove. Nobody ever comes here but ourselves."

"You didn't get all that muscle from bein' chased by McManus," Billy
observed over the coffee.

"Massage under tension," was the cryptic reply.

"Yes," Billy said, pondering vacantly. "Do you eat it with a spoon?"

Hall laughed.

"I'll show you. Take any muscle you want, tense it, then manipulate it
with your fingers, so, and so."

"An' that done all that'" Billy asked skeptically.

"All that!" the other scorned proudly. "For one muscle you see, there's
five tucked away but under command. Touch your finger to any part of me
and see."

Billy complied, touching the right breast.

"You know something about anatomy, picking a muscleless spot," scolded
Hall.

Billy grinned triumphantly, then, to his amazement, saw a muscle grow up
under his finger. He prodded it, and found it hard and honest.

"Massage under tension!" Hall exulted. "Go on--anywhere you want."

And anywhere and everywhere Billy touched, muscles large and small rose
up, quivered, and sank down, till the whole body was a ripple of willed
quick.

"Never saw anything like it," Billy marveled at the end; "an' I've seen
some few good men stripped in my time. Why, you're all living silk."

"Massage under tension did it, my friend. The doctors gave me up. My
friends called me the sick rat, and the mangy poet, and