professional, three inches shorter than his adversary, but a rare model
of brute strength; his arms and neck, where the short jersey left them
exposed, clear-skinned and white as a woman's, through the perfection of
his training; his hair cropped close round a low, retreating forehead;
his thick lips parted in a savage grin, meant to represent a smile of
confidence. So they stood there--fitting champions of the races that
have been antagonistic for four thousand years--Patrician and
Proletarian.

Suddenly there was a commotion at one corner of the ring, and I saw a
small, bullet-headed man, with a voice like a fractious child, striving
frantically to force his way through. "Don't let 'em fight!" he
screamed: "it's robbery, I tell you. There's hundreds of pounds on him
for Thursday next, I'm his trainer; and I daren't show him with a
scratch on him."

A great roar of laughter answered his entreaties, and twenty arms thrust
the little man back; but his interesting charge seemed to ponder and
hesitate, when a drawling nasal voice spoke from the opposite corner:
"Ah! you're right; take him away; don't show his white feather till
you're druv to it." That turned the wavering scale. The Big 'un ground
his teeth with blasphemy, and set-to.

I need not go through the minutiæ of the fight; it was all one way. The
professional did his best, and took his punishment like a glutton; but
he could do nothing against the long reach of his adversary, who stopped
and countered as coolly as if he had only the gloves on.

It was the beginning of the sixth round; our champion bore only one
mark, showing where a tremendous right-hander had almost come home--a