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white trunks—like he'd stood under a shower composed of grape juice! My right glove socked him over the heart and he fell in toward me, his hands dropping down at his sides. Honest, he's laying on me like a dead man.

Some voices hollers "Finish him, kid!" and now that I think of it afterward, I'm sorry to say I pushed him off and tried to do just what the voices said!

But you want to remember that Kelly had beaten and battered me around that gym till I was no more the Gale Galen of Drew City than I am Prince of Wales. As I shoved Kelly off he managed to land a weak punch just on the line of my belt. I took careful and deliberate aim at his jaw and was just going to let go when Nate Shapiro grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to one side. Knockout Kelly slumped half to the floor in the arms of two other fellows.

"Feel hurt anywheres inside, kid?" says Nate anxiously in my ear. They's a crowd around me. Somebody says: "Who is he?" Shapiro says, very proud: "Six-Second Smith, 'at's who he is!"

"I ain't hurt inside or anywheres else either!" I says, shaking myself. "How long was we fighting—a couple of hours?"

"I guess it seems 'at way!" grins Nate, running his hands all over me, like a doctor looking for breaks. "You stepped four and a half minutes with the toughest egg in his class. Kelly's got a draw with the champ. Sweet Papa, if you only knew somethin'! Well, I'll fix 'at part of it. You got a heart and you