“Then you expect to be rather late?”

“We’ll see!”

Frank resorted to all the tricks he knew, but Browning was familiar with every one of them.  They gave up trying to down each other by main strength, and science cut quite a figure in their battle.

At length Browning got Frank foul, and to his dismay the leader of the freshmen felt himself falling.  Browning fell with him, a cry of triumph coming to his lips.

That cry turned to an exclamation of dismay, for Merriwell seemed to twist about in the air, and they fell side by side on the ground.  In a twinkling they were at it again, and over and over they went, till they finally stopped and got upon their feet together.

“Very good thus far,” laughed Merriwell.  “But I see your wind will not hold out.  I am bound to do you in the end.”

That was the very thing Browning feared.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said as he broke Frank’s grip.  “This may settle the whole business.”

He struck hard and straight at Merriwell’s face!

CHAPTER XIII.

Jubilant freshmen.

Spat!

Merriwell staggered.

“Down you go!”

Browning followed the freshman closely, launching out again, with the full expectation that the second blow would be a settler.

Frank had been taken slightly off his guard, so that he had failed in getting away from the first blow, but he skillfully ducked the second, countering as the king’s fist passed over his shoulder.

Browning reeled backward, having received a terrific crack on the ear.

If Frank had not been slightly dazed he might have followed the sophomore closely, but he was a bit slow in getting after Bruce.

For a few seconds the boys gave an exhibition of scientific sparring which would have proved very interesting to their comrades if all had not been too busy to watch them.

Frank Merriwell contiuued to laugh, and it had been said at Yale that he was most dangerous in an encounter when he laughed.

“You came near doing it, Browning,” he admitted, “but it was rather tricky on your part.  I wasn’t looking for a fight.”

“You will get many things you are not looking for before you have been at Yale much longer,” returned the king.

“Think so?”

“Dead sure.”

The two lads seemed to be very evenly matched, save that Merriwell was the more catlike on his feet.  Browning was solid, and it took a terrific blow to stagger him.  Merriwell was plainly the more scientific.  He could get in and away from his foe in a most successful manner, but he saw that in the confined limits of a ring Browning’s rush would be difficult to escape.

What the result of this encounter might have been cannot be told, for two freshmen suddenly appeared and gave the alarm that at least a hundred sophomores were coming in a body to aid their comrades.