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He had had his boyish scraps with his fellows off and on ever since he could

remember; but his first real fight came when he was twelve. He had had an

altercation with an erstwhile pal over the division of the returns from some

freight-car booty. The gang was all present, and as words quickly gave place to

blows, as they have a habit of doing in certain sections of the West Side, the men

and boys formed a rough ring about the contestants.

The battle was a long one. The two were rolling about in the dust of the alley quite

as often as they were upon their feet exchanging blows. There was nothing fair,

nor decent, nor scientific about their methods. They gouged and bit and tore.

They used knees and elbows and feet, and but for the timely presence of a

brickbat beneath his fingers at the psychological moment Billy Byrne would have

gone down to humiliating defeat. As it was the other boy went down, and for a

week Billy remained hidden by one of the gang pending the report from the

hospital.

When word came that the patient would live, Billy felt an immense load lifted

from his shoulders, for he dreaded arrest and experience with the law that he had

learned from childhood to deride and hate. Of course there was the loss of

prestige that would naturally have accrued to him could he have been pointed out

as the "guy that croaked Sheehan"; but there is always a fly in the ointment, and

Billy only sighed and came out of his temporary retirement.

That battle started Billy to thinking, and the result of that mental activity was a

determination to learn to handle his mitts scientifically--people of the West Side

do not have hands; they are equipped by Nature with mitts and dukes. A few

have paws and flippers.

He had no opportunity to realize his new dream for several years; but when he

was about seventeen a neighbor's son surprised his little world by suddenly

developing from an unknown teamster into a locally famous light-weight.

The young man never had been affiliated with the gang, as his escutcheon was

defiled with a record of steady employment. So Billy had known nothing of the

sparring lessons his young neighbor had taken, or of the work he had done at the

down-town gymnasium of Larry Hilmore.

Now it happened that while the new light-weight was unknown to the charmed

circle of the gang, Billy knew him fairly well by reason of the proximity of their

respective parental back yards, and so when the glamour of pugilistic success

haloed the young man Billy lost no time in basking in the light of reflected glory.

He saw much of his new hero all the following winter. He accompanied him to

many mills, and on one glorious occasion occupied a position in the coming

The Mucker