milar knew fear. For he had known of many similar
situations, in low dens like this, when solitary men were man-handled,
their ribs and features caved in, themselves beaten and kicked to death.
And he knew, further, that if he were to escape he must neither strike
his assailant nor any of the men who opposed him.

Yet in him was righteous indignation. Under no circumstances could
seven to one be fair. Also, he was angry, and there stirred in him
the fighting beast that is in all men. But he remembered his wife and
children, his unfinished book, the ten thousand rolling acres of the
up-country ranch he loved so well. He even saw in flashing visions the
blue of the sky, the golden sun pouring down on his flower-spangled
meadows, the lazy cattle knee-deep in the brooks, and the flash of trout
in the riffles. Life was good-too good for him to risk it for a moment's
sway of the beast. In short, Carter Watson was cool and scared.

His opponent, locked by his masterly clinch, was striving to throw him.
Again Watson put him on the floor, broke away, and was thrust back by
the pasty-faced circle to duck Patsy's swinging right and effect another
clinch. This happened many times. And Watson grew even cooler, while
the baffled Patsy, unable to inflict punishment, raged wildly and more
wildly. He took to batting with his head in the clinches. The first
time, he landed his forehead flush on Watson's nose. After that, the
latter, in the clinches, buried his face in Patsy's breast. But the
enraged Patsy batted on, striking his own eye and nose and cheek on the
top of the other's head. The more he was thus injured, the more and the
harder did Patsy bat.

This one-sided contest continued for twelve or fifteen minutes. Watson
never struck a blow, and strove only to escape. Sometimes, in the free
moments, circling about among the tables as he tried to win the door,
the pasty-faced men gripped his coat-tails and flung him back at the
swinging right of the on-rushing Patsy. Time upon time, and times
without end, he clinched and put Patsy on his back, each time first
whirling him around and putting him down in the direction of the door
and gaining toward that goal by the length of the fall.

In the end, hatless, disheveled, with streaming nose and one eye closed,
Watson won to the sidewalk and into the arms of a policeman.

"Arrest that man," Watson panted.

"Hello, Patsy," said the policeman. "What's the mix-up?"

"Hello, Charley," wa