he tenth and
last round now and Anthony, with his strange smile, was turning to the
young man and--ah, yes, he was speaking:

"Pardon me!"

The boy started with undue violence and stared at him, drew back a
little and even looked Anthony up and down as he said:

"Speaking to me?"

"I am speaking to you, young man," Anthony smiled benignly. "May I speak
to you a little more?"

This, very evidently, was a sensitive boy, unaccustomed to chatting with
really elegant, palpably prosperous strangers. The startled eyes ran
over Anthony again and a frown came into them.

"What's the idea?" he asked briefly.

"There is a very large idea, which I should like to make clear to you,"
Mr. Fry went on smoothly. "I should like to have a talk with you, young
man--not here, of course, but when the fight is over--and it will be to
your considerable advantage----"

"I don't want to buy anything," the canny young man informed him.

"And I don't want to sell you anything," Anthony laughed, "but I do wish
to present to you a proposition which will be of much interest."

This time, possibly not without warrant, the boy shrank unmistakably
from him, hitching his collar a little higher and his cap a little
farther down.

"It wouldn't interest me," he said with some finality. "I'm--just a poor
lad, you know, and I haven't a cent to invest in anything."

"But you have an hour to invest, perhaps?" Anthony smiled.

"Nope!"

"Oh, yes, you have," the owner of Fry's Imperial Liniment persisted. "It
is for no purpose of my own, save perhaps to justify a small contention,
but I wish you to come home with me for a little while."

"WHAT?" said the boy.

As Johnson Boller observed, sighing heavily and shaking his head as he
observed it, the young man was downright scared now. An older citizen
would have spoken his candid thoughts to Anthony Fry, doubtless, and
chilled him back to reason; but this one drew away from Anthony until he
bumped into Johnson Boller, turned hastily and asked the latter's pardon
and then gazed at Anthony with eyes which, if not filled with terror,
certainly held a quantity of somewhat amused apprehension.

He shook his head determinedly and seemed to be seeking words, and as he
sought them a new element entered the situation. The red-faced person
just behind Anthony Fry, having gazed suddenly from the youngster to the
maker of theories, lurched forward suddenly and spoke:

"Let that kid alone!"

"Eh?" Anthony