home, leaving behind him a record of which any boxer might have been
proud. He personally was exceedingly proud of it, and made no secret of
the fact.

He was a man in private life of astonishingly even temper. The only
thing that appeared to have the power to ruffle him to the slightest
extent was the contemplation of what he described as the bunch of
cheeses who pretended to fight nowadays. He would have considered it a
privilege, it seemed, to be allowed to encounter all the middle-weights
in the country in one ring in a single night without training. But it
appeared that he had promised his mother to quit, and he had quit.

Steve's mother was an old lady who in her day had been the best
washerwoman on Cherry Hill. She was, moreover, completely lacking in
all the qualities which go to make up the patroness of sport. Steve had
been injudicious enough to pay her a visit the day after his celebrated
unpleasantness with that rugged warrior, Pat O'Flaherty (_ne_
Smith), and, though he had knocked Pat out midway through the second
round, he bore away from the arena a black eye of such a startling
richness that old Mrs. Dingle had refused to be comforted until he had
promised never to enter the ring again. Which, as Steve said, had come
pretty hard, he being a man who would rather be a water-bucket in a
ring than a president outside it.

But he had given the promise, and kept it, leaving the field to the
above-mentioned bunch of cheeses. There were times when the temptation
to knock the head off Battling Dick this and Fighting Jack that became
almost agony, but he never yielded to it. All of which suggests that
Steve was a man of character, as indeed he was.