In the ring the men had thrown aside their dressing-gowns and the opposing seconds were examining the bandages upon their hands.  Clancy wore bright green trunks, which if his name had failed would have betrayed his lineage, and his great chest and arms were covered with designs in tattoo.  Jerry wore dark trunks.  And as his wonderful arms and torso were exposed to view, a murmur of approval went over the audience.  In spite of his training in the open his skin was still very white beside the bronzed figure of his adversary, but the muscles rippled smoothly and strongly under the fair skin—­and bulked large at thigh and forearm as he moved his limbs.  It was not the strong man’s figure nor yet, like Clancy’s, the stocky, thickly built structure of the professional fighter’s, yet it was so solid, so admirably compact that his great height was unnoticeable.  I could see from the expressions upon the faces of those about me and the calls from the seats behind us, that Jerry’s appearance had already gained the respect of the crowd, some members of which were already hailing him by his first name.  “Good boy, Jerry,” they cried, or “All right, old boy.  You’ve got the goods—­but look out for his right.”

Even the stout person beside me was silent and I heard nothing more about the goldfish.  Fortunately for him, and for me, I suspect, for had he repeated his phrase, I might have brained him with a chair.

The preliminary conferences at an end, the principals took their corners, fresh ones not used in the preliminaries, Jerry luckily with his back toward the box in which the Van Wyck girl was sitting.  If their glances had met, I did not notice.  For all that I knew.  Jerry might have been unaware that she was in the house.  He did not look around in a search for her and seemed totally absorbed in his instructions from Flynn, who stood outside the ropes just behind him whispering continuously in his ear, Jerry nodding from time to time and glancing across the ring to Clancy’s corner, where the superbeast was sprawled, his long arms extended upon the ropes.  Spatola and the black Swede were seeing to Jerry’s gloves and looking over every detail of the corner with careful eyes.

The referee called the two men to the center of the ring and gave them some final instructions, to which they nodded assent, and they had hardly returned to their corners when the gong clanged, stools and paraphernalia were whipped out of the ring, the seconds and trainers crouched outside and the fight was on.  As the men came together the disparity in their sizes became less marked for, while Clancy was the shorter, he made up by his huge bulk what he lacked in height.  He was a dangerous man, but there was no timidity in Jerry’s eyes and he came forward sparring carefully, gliding backward and forward feeling out the other man’s length and speed.  Clancy’s left grazed Jerry’s ear and the boy countered lightly.  His color was rising now and his eyes