"Double entry! What's that?"

"It's the way merchants' books are kept. It is called so because
everything is entered twice over."

"Ah!" said Skene, unfavorably impressed by the system; "once is
enough for me. What's your weight?"

"I don't know," said the lad, with a grin.

"Not know your own weight!" exclaimed Skene. "That ain't the way to
get on in life."

"I haven't been weighed since I was in England," said the other,
beginning to get the better of his shyness. "I was eight stone four
then; so you see I am only a light-weight."

"And what do you know about light-weights? Perhaps, being so well
educated, you know how to fight. Eh?"

"I don't think I could fight you," said the youth, with another
grin.

Skene chuckled; and the stranger, with boyish communicativeness,
gave him an account of a real fight (meaning, apparently, one
between professional pugilists) which he had seen in England. He
went on to describe how he had himself knocked down a master with
one blow when running away from school. Skene received this
sceptically, and cross-examined the narrator as to the manner and