"Yes, I heard you were making tremendous progress. Jack Needham told me a month ago that you had knocked him out of time, and I went into Gibbons' yesterday morning with a man who wanted to buy a dog, and he told me that he considered that it was a great misfortune that you were an amateur, for that you only required another six months' practice, and he would then be ready to back you for a hundred pounds against any man in the ring. But about this affair, Mark. Are you really in earnest?"

"I am, Dick, thoroughly in earnest; so would you be if you had spoken to Cotter last night, as I did. I tell you that if I had not given him a little hope that the thing might come out right, he would have blown out his brains today."

"Well, Mark, if you have set your mind on it, of course I will stick to you, though I have some doubts whether Cotter has any brains to speak of to blow out, else he would not be mad enough to back himself against Emerson and other men whom Boldero tells me he has been playing with."