This closed the interview.  Later she refused more than a swift glance of dismay at the photograph of the bully proudly displayed to her by the recipient.  With one eye widened in admiration, he thrust it without warning full into her gaze, whereupon she had gaspingly fled, not even noting the inscription of which the boy was especially proud:  “To my friend, Mr. Wilbur Cowan, from his friend, Eddie—­Spike—­Brennon, 133 lbs. ringside.”  It was a spirited likeness of the hero, though taken some years before, when he was in the prime of a ring career now, alas, tapering to obscurity.

Spike stood with the left shoulder slightly raised, the left foot advanced, the slightly bent left arm with its clenched fist suggestively extended.  His head was slanted to bring his chin down and in.  The right shoulder was depressed, and the praiseworthy right arm lay in watchful repose across his chest.  The tense gaze expressed absolute singleness of purpose—­a hostile purpose.  These details were lost upon Winona.  She had noted only that the creature’s costume consisted of the flags of the United States and Ireland tastefully combined to form a simple loin cloth.  Had she raised the boy for this?

* * * * *

The deplored intimacy had begun on a morning when Wilbur was early abroad salvaging golf balls from certain obscure nooks of the course where Newbern’s minor players were too likely to abandon the search for them on account of tall grass, snakes, poison ivy, and other deterrents.  Along the course at a brisk trot had come a sweatered figure, with cap pulled low, a man of lined and battered visage, who seemed to trot with a purpose, and yet with a purpose not to be discerned, for none pursued him and he appeared to pursue no one.

[Illustration:  “THE MALIGN EYE WAS WORN SO PROUDLY THAT THE WEARER BUBBLED VAINGLORIOUSLY OF HOW HE HAD ACHIEVED THE STIGMA BY STEPPING INTO ONE OF SPIKE BRENNON’S STRAIGHT LEFTS.”]

He had stopped amiably to chat with the boy.  He was sweating profusely, and chewed gum.  It may be said that he was not the proud young Spike Brennon of the photograph.  He was all of twenty-five, and his later years had told.  Where once had been the bridge of his nose was now a sharp indentation.  One ear was weirdly enlarged; and his mouth, though he spoke through narrowly opened lips, glittered in the morning sun with the sheen of purest gold.  Wilbur Cowan was instantly enmeshed by this new personality.

The runner wished to know what he was looking for.  Being told golf balls, he demanded “What for?” It seemed never to have occurred to him that there would be an object in looking for golf balls.  He curiously handled and weighed a ball in his brown and hairy hand.

“So that’s the little joker, is it?  I often seen ’em knockin’ up flies with it, but I ain’t never been close to one.  Say, that pill could hurt you if it come right!”

He was instructed briefly in the capacity of moving balls to inflict pain, and more particularly as to their market value.  As the boy talked the sweating man looked him over with shrewd, half-shut eyes.