The two spectators were convulsed with laughter.  Zeigler’s face was a fiery crimson, and he scrambled to his feet in a fury.

“That was a slip; you can’t do it again!” he exclaimed, springing at Tom and hastily locking arms with him.

“All right; we’ll see.  Now do your best, for I mean to throw you just as I did a minute ago.  Are you ready?”

“Of course I am; go ahead.”

Zeigler was not lacking in a certain skill.  The lesson he had just received was not lost on him.  He was cautious, tricky, and alert—­more so than Tom suspected, and he put forth the utmost cunning of which he was capable.

They twisted, swayed back and forth, and once Tom came within a hair of falling, owing to a slight slip of one foot.  But he was on his mettle, and, putting forth his whole might and ability, he flung his antagonist on his back with a violence that almost drove the breath from his body.

“Fudge!” remarked Tom, turning away in disgust; “I’ll give you a few lessons if you wish to learn how to wrestle.  Any way, you had better take lessons of some person before you bother me again.”

The other two clerks had dropped upon the nearest stools, and were holding their sides with mirth.

“Zeigler,” said one, when he recovered speech, “that’s too big a contract for you; you can’t deliver the goods.”

“You’ll have to pay for those window-panes you shook out,” added the other.

“I’ve got a set of boxing-gloves here,” growled Zeigler, who tried to assume an indifference, as he brushed off his clothes and looked up with flaming face.  “I’d like to try you with them.”

“I’m agreeable,” replied Tom, who had seen Zeigler bang the other clerks around with the gloves as he pleased.  “I learned something of the business when I was a newsboy.  I hope you are better at it than you are at wrestling.”

While Tom was speaking he was drawing on a pair of gloves and fixing the strings at the wrist.  Zeigler was a little uneasy at the coolness of his opponent, and his readiness in accepting his challenge.  Then, too, when he took his position, with his left foot advanced, his right glove in front of his chest, his left arm extended, the pose was so like a professional, that Zeigler’s misgivings increased.  Still he felt great confidence in his own skill, and there was no criticism to be made upon his position when he faced the youth, for whose vanquishment he would have given half his year’s salary.

“Now,” said Tom, with his exasperating coolness, “I propose that each do his best.  I don’t suppose you want any baby play.  I don’t.  I invite you to hit me as often and as hard as you can.  I’m going to do the same with you. Time!”

They began dancing about a common center, sawing their arms back and forth, each looking sharply in the other’s eye and on the alert for an opening.

Tom meant to make the other lead; for, before assuming the aggressive, he wished to know more about Zeigler.  It might be he possessed greater skill than Tom believed.  He meant to learn something of his style.