his trainer's imposed fast in liquids on, the night before the battle.
Right through his training, up to that hour, the rascal was devout; the
majority's money rattled all on the snug safe side. And how did he get
at the bottle? His trainers never could say. But what made him turn
himself into a headlong ass, when he had only to wait a night to sit
among friends and worshippers drinking off his tumbler upon tumbler with
the honours? It was past his wits to explain. Endurance of his
privation had snapped in him; or else, which is more likely, this Genius
of the Ring was tempted by his genius on the summit of his perfected
powers to believe the battle his own, and celebrate it, as became a
victor despising the drubbed antagonist.

In any case, he drank, and a minor man gave him the dog's licking..
'Went into it puffy, came out of it bunged,' the chronicle resounding
over England ran. Old England read of an 'eyeless carcase' heroically
stepping up to time for three rounds of mashing punishment. If he had
won the day after all, the country would have been electrified. It
sympathized on the side of his backers too much to do more than nod a
short approval of his fortitude. To sink with flag flying is next to
sinking the enemy. There was talk of a girl present at the fight, and of
how she received the eyeless, almost faceless, carcase of her sweetheart
Kit, and carried him away in a little donkey-cart, comfortably cushioned
to meet disaster. This petty incident drew the attention of the Earl of
Fleetwood, then beginning to be known as the diamond of uncounted facets,
patron of the pick of all departments of manly activity in England.

The devotion of the girl Madge to her sweetheart was really a fine story.
Fleetwood touched on it to Mr. Mallard, speaking of it like the gentleman
he could be, while Chumley Potts wagged impatient acquiescence in a
romantic episode of the Ring, that kept the talk from the hotter theme.