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to the fighting men of the days that they were live things so were the habiliments

of gentility to Billy Byrne at all times.

Billy Mallory was an older man than the mucker--twenty-four perhaps--and fully

as large. For four years he had played right guard on a great eastern team, and

for three he had pulled stroke upon the crew. During the two years since his

graduation he had prided himself upon the maintenance of the physical

supremacy that had made the name of Mallory famous in collegiate athletics; but

in one vital essential he was hopelessly handicapped in combat with such as Billy

Byrne, for Mallory was a gentleman.

As the mucker rushed upward toward him Mallory had all the advantage of

position and preparedness, and had he done what Billy Byrne would have done

under like circumstances he would have planted a kick in the midst of the

mucker's facial beauties with all the power and weight and energy at his

command; but Billy Mallory could no more have perpetrated a cowardly trick

such as this than he could have struck a woman.

Instead, he waited, and as the mucker came on an even footing with him Mallory

swung a vicious right for the man's jaw. Byrne ducked beneath the blow, came up

inside Mallory's guard, and struck him three times with trip-hammer velocity and

pile-driver effectiveness--once upon the jaw and twice--below the belt!

The girl, clinging to the rail, riveted by the paralysis of fright, saw her champion

stagger back and half crumple to the deck. Then she saw him make a brave and

desperate rally, as, though torn with agony, he lurched forward in an endeavor to

clinch with the brute before him. Again the mucker struck his victim--quick

choppy hooks that rocked Mallory's head from side to side, and again the brutal

blow below the belt; but with the tenacity of a bulldog the man fought for a hold

upon his foe, and at last, notwithstanding Byrne's best efforts, he succeeded in

closing with the mucker and dragging him to the deck.

Here the two men rolled and tumbled, Byrne biting, gouging, and kicking while

Mallory devoted all of his fast-waning strength to an effort to close his fingers

upon the throat of his antagonist. But the terrible punishment which the mucker

had inflicted upon him overcame him at last, and as Byrne felt the man's efforts

weakening he partially disengaged himself and raising himself upon one arm

dealt his now almost unconscious enemy a half-dozen frightful blows upon the

face.

With a shriek Barbara Harding turned from the awful sight as Billy Mallory's

bloody and swollen eyes rolled up and set, while the mucker threw the inert form

roughly from him. Quick to the girl's memory sprang Mallory's recent declaration,

The Mucker