Still the Virginian gasped for breath and seemed unable to lift a hand. 
If ever a fellow seemed done up, it was Diamond just then.

Roll Ditson ground his teeth in despair.

“Oh, Merriwell will think he is cock of the walk now!” he muttered.  “He’ll crow and strut!  He’s laughing over it now!”

“Wh-what’s that?” gasped Diamond, trying to sit up.

“He is laughing at you,” hurriedly whispered Ditson, lying glibly.  “I just heard him tell Rattleton that he could have knocked the stuffing out of you in less than a quarter of a minute.  He says you’ll never dare face him again.”

“Oh, he does! oh, he does!” came huskily from Diamond’s lips.  “Well, we’ll see about that—­we’ll see!”

With Ditson’s aid he got upon his feet.  Then his breath and his strength seemed to come to him in a twinkling.  With a backward snap of his arm he flung his second away.  Then uttering a hoarse cry, he rushed like a mad bull at the lad he hated.

CHAPTER V.

The finish.

Diamond’s recovery and the manner in which he resumed the fight caused general astonishment.  Even Bruce Browning had come to think that the Virginian was “out.”

Frank was taken by surprise.  Before he could square away to meet his foe, Diamond struck him a terrific blow near the temple, knocking him into Rattleton’s arms.

“Foul!” cried Harry, excitedly.  “Horner hadn’t given the word.”

“Foul! foul!” came from all sides.

“There is no foul in this fight save when something is used besides fists,” declared Merriwell as he staggered from his roommate’s arms.  “It’s all right and it goes.”

But he found that everything seemed swimming around him, and dark spots were pursuing each other before his eyes.  The floor seemed to heave like the deck of a ship at sea.  He put out his hand to grasp something, and then he was struck again.

Once more Rattleton’s arms kept Frank from going down.

“This is no square deal!” Harry shouted.  “By the poly hoker—­I mean the holy poker!  I’ll take a hand in this myself!”

He would have released Merriwell and jumped into the ring, but Frank’s strong fingers closed on his arm.

“Steady, old man!” came sharply from Merriwell’s lips.  “I am in this yet awhile.  If Diamond finishes me he is to be let alone.  The fellow that lays a hand on him is no friend of mine!”

“You give me cramps!” groaned Harry.

Instead of aiding in finishing Frank, Diamond’s second blow seemed to straighten him up, as if it had cleared a fog from his brain.  The spots disappeared before his eyes and things ceased to swim around him.

Into the ring to meet his foe sprang Frank, and, to the astonishment of everybody he still smiled.

At the same time, Merriwell knew he had toyed with Diamond too long.  He realized that the Virginian’s first blow had come within a hair of knocking him out, and he could still hear a faint, ringing and roaring in his head.