Mr. Conklin shot a quick glance at the other.  “Oh, so you think you’ll have to report it, eh?”

“Naturally!”

“Hm.  Well, all right.  Only it somehow seems to me that as they were off of school property and were settling an affair in a perfectly regular way it might be overlooked without any harm, Horace.  You know best, of course.  That’s just my notion.”

“But that would be encouraging fighting here, Jim, and you know what the rules are.  I—­I wish I might—­er—­forget it, but I don’t think I conscientiously can.”

Mr. Conklin nodded.  After a moment he said, with a chuckle:  “That was a clever punch of Durkin’s.  I’m glad we got there for the knock-out.”

“Durkin appeared much lighter than Beaufort, too,” replied Mr. Daley, unwilling admiration in his voice.  “I wonder how he happens to be so—­er—­clever.”

“Because he took boxing lessons with me for two years,” answered Mr. Conklin unhesitatingly.  “We used to have boxing, you know.  That was before your time, though.  I remember now that Durkin, although a mere kid, was very quick and took to it like a duck to water.  It was a great mistake to abolish boxing.  There’s no better exercise, and none more useful.”

“But doesn’t it—­er—­encourage just this sort of thing?” asked Mr. Daley, with a backward tilt of his head.

“Not a bit,” replied the other stoutly.  “On the contrary, if a boy can put on a pair of gloves and harmlessly pound another boy about a bit—­or get pounded about—­it satisfies the desire for fistic encounter that’s a part of every fellow’s make-up, and he’s a lot less likely to be quarrelsome.  Besides, Horace, it’s a fine exercise for the body and brain and eyes.”

“Brain?” questioned Mr. Daley smilingly.

“Undoubtedly!  Try it some time and see if it isn’t.  You’ve got to think quick, look quick and act quick.  If I had my way boxing would be compulsory, by George!”

Mr. Daley shook his head doubtfully.  “You may be right,” he said, “but it seems to me that teaching a boy how to fight is going to make him want to.  That’s the way it goes with other things, Jim.  Give a boy lessons in swimming and he wants to swim; teach him—­er—­how to jump—­”

“Teach him how to box and he wants to box.  Certainly, but that doesn’t mean that he wants to go around picking quarrels and fighting with bare fists.  You might as well say that learning to fence makes you want to go out and stab folks with a rapier!  And look at the evidence presented awhile ago.  Beaufort undoubtedly picked that quarrel.  There can’t be any doubt of that.  We know his record.  Beaufort, I’ll wager, never took a boxing lesson in his life.  He showed it.  The chap who knew how to box, Durkin, had to be forced to fight.”

“You’ll convince me in a minute,” laughed Mr. Daley, “that if I want to keep out of trouble I’ll have to learn to use my fists!”

“It would be a good thing if you did,” responded the other.  “Come over to the gym some afternoon and have a go at it!”