down the crowded Haymarket, and
was engulfed in the traffic.

The two men looked at each other in silence.

"Well, blow my dicky, if this don't beat cockfightin'!" cried Tom Cribb
at last. "Anyhow, there's the fiver, lad. But it's a rum go, and no
mistake about it."

After due consultation, it was agreed that Tom Spring should go into
training at the Castle Inn on Hampstead Heath, so that Cribb could drive
over and watch him. Thither Spring went on the day after the interview
with his patroness, and he set to work at once with drugs, dumb-bells,
and breathers on the common to get himself into condition. It was hard,
however, to take the matter seriously, and his good-natured trainer
found the same difficulty.

"It's the baccy I miss, Daddy," said the young pugilist, as they sat
together on the afternoon of the third day. "Surely there can't be any
harm in my havin' a pipe?"

"Well, well, lad, it's against my conscience, but here's my box and
there's a yard o' clay," said the Champion. "My word, I don't know what
Captain Barclay of Ury would have said if he had seen a man smoke when
he was in trainin'! He was the man to work you! He had me down from
sixteen to thirteen the second time I fought the Black."

Spring had lit his pipe and was leaning back amid a haze of blue smoke.

"It was easy for you, Daddy, to keep strict trainin' when you knew what
was before you. You had your date and your place and your man. You knew
that in a month you would jump the ropes with ten thousand folk round
you, and carrying maybe a hundred thousand in bets. You knew also the
man you had to meet, and you wouldn't give him the better of you. But
it's all different with me. For all I know, this is just a woman's whim,
and will end in nothing. If I was sure it was serious, I'd break this
pipe before I would smoke it."

Tom Cribb scratched his head in puzzlement.

"I can make nothing of it, lad, 'cept that her money is good. Come to
think of it, how many men on the list could stand up to you for half an
hour? It can't be Stringer, 'cause you've beat him. Then there's Cooper;
but he's up Newcastle way. It can't be him. There's Richmond; but you
wouldn't need to take your coat off to beat him. There's the Gasman; but
he's not twelve stone. And there's Bill Neat of Bristol. That's it, lad.
The lady has taken into her head to put you up against either the Gasman
or Bill Neat."

"But why not say so? I'd train hard for the Gasman and har