“You strip good” he said carelessly.  “Well! what’s it to be? . . . ‘muck’ or ’muffin’?”

“‘Muffin’ of course!” snapped Redmond angrily, “what d’ye take me for?—­a ’rough-house meal ticket’?”

“All right!” said Yorke soothingly, “don’t lose your temper!”

It may have been a shrewdly-calculated attempt to attain that end; and yet again it may have been only sheer mechanical habit that prompted him to stretch forth his hands in the customary salute of the ring.

With an inarticulate exclamation of rage the younger man struck the proffered hands aside and led with a straight left for the other’s head.  Yorke blocked it cleverly and fell into a clinch.

“Ah!” murmured Yorke in his antagonist’s ear with a sinister smile, “rotten manners! for just that, my buck, I’ll make you scoff ‘muffin’ ’till you’re quite poorly!”

Working his arms cautiously, he sprang clear of the clinch, then, rushing his man and feinting for the ribs, he rocked Redmond’s head back with two terrific left and right hooks to the jaw.

The jarring sting of the punches, although dazing him slightly, brought Redmond to his senses, as he realized how vulnerable his momentary loss of temper had rendered him.  He now braced himself with dogged determination and, covering up warily, circled his adversary with clever foot-work.  Yorke, tearing in again was met with one of the crudest jabs he had ever known—­flush in the mouth.  Gamely he retaliated with a stinging uppercut and a right swing which, coming home on Redmond’s cheek-bone, whirled him off his balance and sent him sprawling.

Dazed, but not daunted, he scrambled to his feet.  Yorke, blowing upon his knuckles with all the air of an old-time “Regency blood,” waited with heaving chest and scornful, narrowed eyes.

“Want to elevate the sponge?” he queried sneeringly.

“No!” panted George grimly, “it was you started the whole rotten dirty business, and, by gum!  I’ll finish it!”

Dancing in and out he drew an ineffective left from his opponent and countered with a pile-driving right to the heart.  Yorke gave vent to a groaning exclamation and turned pale.  He spat gaspingly out of his mashed lips and propped Redmond off awhile; then, suddenly springing in again he attempted to mix it.  George was nothing loath, and the two men, standing toe-to-toe, slugged each other with a perfect whirlwind of damaging punches to face and body.

Even in the giddy whirl of combat, in either man’s heart now was a wonder almost akin to respect for each other’s ring knowledge and gameness.  It was not George’s first bout by many, but the physical endurance of this hard, clean-hitting Corinthian of a man was an astounding revelation to him; the science of the graceful, narrow-waisted figure was still as quick and as punishing as a steel trap.

Yorke, for his part, reflected with bitter irony how utterly erroneous had been his primary calculations—­how Nemesis was hard upon his heels at last in the guise of this relentless youngster, who fought like a college-bred “Charley Mitchell.”