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Three-Round Contest:  CONSCIENCE (Celestial B.C.) v.  J. GARNET (Unattached).

Round One.—­Conscience came to the scratch smiling and confident.  Led off lightly with a statement that it would be bad for a man of the professor’s age to get wet.  Garnet countered heavily, alluding to the warmth of the weather and the fact that the professor habitually enjoyed a bathe every day.  Much sparring, Conscience not quite so confident, and apparently afraid to come to close quarters with this man.  Time called, with little damage done.

Round Two.—­Conscience, much freshened by the half minute’s rest, feinted with the charge of deceitfulness, and nearly got home heavily with “What would Phyllis say if she knew?” Garnet, however, side-stepped cleverly with “But she won’t know,” and followed up the advantage with a damaging, “Besides, it’s all for the best.”  The round ended with a brisk rally on general principles, Garnet crowding in a lot of work.  Conscience down twice, and only saved by the call of time.

Round Three (and last).—­Conscience came up very weak, and with Garnet as strong as ever it was plain that the round would be a brief one.  This proved to be the case.  Early in the second minute Garnet cross-countered with “All’s Fair in Love and War.”  Conscience down and out.  The winner left the ring without a mark.

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I rose, feeling much refreshed.

That afternoon I interviewed Mr. Hawk in the bar-parlour of the Net and Mackerel.

“Hawk,” I said to him darkly, over a mystic and conspirator-like pot of ale, “I want you, next time you take Professor Derrick out fishing”—­here I glanced round, to make sure that we were not overheard—­“to upset him.”

His astonished face rose slowly from the pot of ale like a full moon.

“What ’ud I do that for?” he gasped.

“Five shillings, I hope,” said I, “but I am prepared to go to ten.”

He gurgled.

I encored his pot of ale.

He kept on gurgling.

I argued with the man.

I spoke splendidly.  I was eloquent, but at the same time concise.  My choice of words was superb.  I crystallised my ideas into pithy sentences which a child could have understood.

And at the end of half-an-hour he had grasped the salient points of the scheme.  Also he imagined that I wished the professor upset by way of a practical joke.  He gave me to understand that this was the type of humour which was to be expected from a gentleman from London.  I am afraid he must at one period in his career have lived at one of those watering-places at which trippers congregate.  He did not seem to think highly of the Londoner.

I let it rest at that.  I could not give my true reason, and this served as well as any.

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At the last moment he recollected that he, too, would get wet when the accident took place, and he raised the price to a sovereign.