“But you won’t be at the end of the year.”

“And I’m still against Dick Starbright.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve a reason for not trying to do what you suggest. It isn’t because I’ve suddenly grown too good. Perhaps I have a little honor left, Pike, though you mightn’t think it. Not enough to boast of, I presume!”

“You haven’t heard of it, but yesterday Starbright saved me from being half-killed by a tough that I met while out wheeling. The place was a lonely one in the suburbs, and I was wheeling with Miss Thornton. I met the tough in a drinking-den a few nights ago, and struck him with a beer-glass, after we’d had some words. When he saw me yesterday he came at me for revenge, tripped me off my wheel, and then, while I was too shaken up by the jar of the fall to be able to do much, he set on me, and would have pounded and kicked me to a jelly. Starbright happened along at that moment. He took a hand in the game—and I’m here to-day, instead of being in the hospital.”

Both were silent for a moment after the completion of the story.

“He did you a good turn, and maybe you’re right. But really, I didn’t think you had any soft spots about you.”

“You thought such a thing wouldn’t make any difference?”

“Yes, honestly, that’s what I thought.”

“And you thought I had no heart at all?”

Pike was quite blunt.

“I thought you had something like a gizzard doing duty for that organ. But it’s all right, of course! I suppose I’d feel the same way if any fellow should stand up for me in such a fight.”

“It wasn’t a fight on my part. I was clean knocked out. I would have been hammered to pieces.”

“Let the thing drop, then!” Pike begged. “And say nothing about it to any one. I didn’t know you had changed in your feeling!”

The sneer stung Dade Morgan.

“I thought I should never let an opportunity go by to strike at 

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