many of you?"

"Four."

"Can you lick all the others?"

I stopped to laugh. By some shrewd guess he had hit on our chief
difficulty as a community. We were all four country boys with a good
deal of residuary energy and high spirits; and we were not popular with
the tenants underneath.

"You see I'm pretty big----" I reminded him.

"Yes, I see you are. That's why I'm with you. Do you think you can lick
me?"

I stopped short again, in surprise.

"What in blazes----" I began.

He laughed, and the devils in his eyes danced right out to the surface
of them.

"I asked you a plain question," he said, "and I'd like the favour of a
plain answer. Do you think you can lick me as well as your rural
friends?"

"I can," said I shortly.

He ran his arm through mine eagerly.

"Come on!" he cried, "on to West Ninth!"

We found two of my roommates smoking and talking before the tiny open
fire. Talbot Ward, full of the business in hand, rushed directly at the
matter once the introductions were over.

Our arrangements were very simple; the chairs were few and pushed back
easily, and we had an old set of gloves.

"Which is it to be?" I asked my guest, "boxing or wrestling?"

"I said you couldn't _lick_ me," he replied. "Boxing is a game with
rules; it isn't fighting at all."

"You want to bite and gouge and scratch, then?" said I, greatly amused.

"I do not; they would not be fair; a fight's a fight; but a man can be
decent with it all. We'll put on the gloves, and we'll hit and wrestle
both--in fact, we'll fight."

He began rapidly to strip.

"Would you expect to get off your clothes in a real fight?" I asked him
a little sardonically.

"If I _expected_ to fight, yes!" said he. "Why not? Didn't the
Greek and Roman and Hebrew and Hun and every other good old fighter
'strip for the fray' when he got a chance? Of course! Takeoff your
shirt, man!"

I began also to strip for this strange contest whose rules seemed to be
made up from a judicious selection of general principles by Talbot Ward.

My opponent's body was as beautiful as his head. The smooth white skin
covered long muscles that rippled beneath it with every slightest
motion. The chest was deep, the waist and hips narrow, the shoulders
well rounded. In contrast my own big prominent muscles, trained by heavy
farm work of my early youth, seemed to move slowly, to knot sluggishly
though powerfully. Nevertheless I judged at a glance that my strength
could