The man who had spoken was the most extraordinary of all the many curious figures in the room.  He was very, very old, so old that he was past all comparison, and no one by looking at his mummy skin and fish-like eyes could give a guess at his years.  A few scanty grey hairs still hung about his yellow scalp.  As to his features, they were scarcely human in their disfigurement, for the deep wrinkles and pouchings of extreme age had been added to a face which had always been grotesquely ugly, and had been crushed and smashed in addition by many a blow.  I had noticed this creature at the beginning of the meal, leaning his chest against the edge of the table as if its support was a welcome one, and feebly picking at the food which was placed before him.  Gradually, however, as his neighbours plied him with drink, his shoulders grew squarer, his back stiffened, his eyes brightened, and he looked about him, with an air of surprise at first, as if he had no clear recollection of how he came there, and afterwards with an expression of deepening interest, as he listened, with his ear scooped up in his hand, to the conversation around him.

“That’s old Buckhorse,” whispered Champion Harrison.  “He was just the same as that when I joined the ring twenty years ago.  Time was when he was the terror of London.”

“’E was so,” said Bill Warr. “’E would fight like a stag, and ’e was that ’ard that ’e would let any swell knock ’im down for ’alf-a-crown.  ’E ’ad no face to spoil, d’ye see, for ’e was always the ugliest man in England.  But ’e’s been on the shelf now for near sixty years, and it cost ‘im many a beatin’ before ’e could understand that ‘is strength was slippin’ away from ’im.”

“Youth will be served, masters,” droned the old man, shaking his head miserably.

“Fill up ’is glass,” said Warr. “’Ere, Tom, give old Buckhorse a sup o’ liptrap.  Warm his ’eart for ’im.”

The old man poured a glass of neat gin down his shrivelled throat, and the effect upon him was extraordinary.  A light glimmered in each of his dull eyes, a tinge of colour came into his wax-like cheeks, and, opening his toothless mouth, he suddenly emitted a peculiar, bell-like, and most musical cry.  A hoarse roar of laughter from all the company answered it, and flushed faces craned over each other to catch a glimpse of the veteran.

“There’s Buckhorse!” they cried.  “Buckhorse is comin’ round again.”

“You can laugh if you vill, masters,” he cried, in his Lewkner Lane dialect, holding up his two thin, vein-covered hands.  “It von’t be long that you’ll be able to see my crooks vich ’ave been on Figg’s conk, and on Jack Broughton’s, and on ’Arry Gray’s, and many another good fightin’ man that was millin’ for a livin’ before your fathers could eat pap.”

The company laughed again, and encouraged the old man by half-derisive and half-affectionate cries.

“Let ’em ’ave it, Buckhorse!  Give it ’em straight!  Tell us how the millin’ coves did it in your time.”