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Yes! It must be he. Greedily she read and re-read all that had been written about

him. Yes, she, Barbara Harding, scion of an aristocratic house--ultra-society girl,

read and re-read the accounts of a brutal prize fight.

A half hour later a messenger boy found "Sailor" Byrne the center of an admiring

throng in Professor Cassidy's third-floor gymnasium. With worshiping eyes taking

in his new hero from head to foot the youth handed Byrne a note.

He stood staring at the heavy weight until he had perused it.

"Any answer?" he asked.

"No answer, kid," replied Byrne, "that I can't take myself," and he tossed a dollar

to the worshiping boy.

An hour later Billy Byrne was ascending the broad, white steps that led to the

entrance of Anthony Harding's New York house. The servant who answered his

ring eyed him suspiciously, for Billy Byrne still dressed like a teamster on

holiday. He had no card!

"Tell Miss Harding that Mr. Byrne has come," he said.

The servant left him standing in the hallway, and started to ascend the great

staircase, but halfway up he met Miss Harding coming down.

"Never mind, Smith," she said. "I am expecting Mr. Byrne," and then seeing that

the fellow had not seated her visitor she added, "He is a very dear friend." Smith

faded quickly from the scene.

"Billy!" cried the girl, rushing toward him with out-stretched hands. "O Billy, we

thought you were dead. How long have you been here? Why haven't you been to

see me?"

Byrne hesitated.

A great, mad hope had been surging through his being since he had read of the

broken engagement and received the girl's note. And now in her eyes, in her

whole attitude, he could read, as unmistakably as though her lips had formed the

words that he had not hoped in vain.

But some strange influence had seemed suddenly to come to work upon him.

Even in the brief moment of his entrance into the magnificence of Anthony

Harding's home he had felt a strange little stricture of the throat--a choking, half-

suffocating sensation.

144

The Mucker