Just before the gong called the boxers to their feet for Round Three, Nick Cluett, leaning back from the flicking towels, beckoned his manager and whispered in the latter's ear, afterwards giving him a whack on the shoulder with his glove as at the conclusion of a joke. Mr. Masterman was seen by Miss Yockley to brighten, and to resume his seat with something very like a smile. "Clubs is trumps, huh?" Miss Stella relaxed from her nervousness a little to remark. "Well, all hands is glad it ain't spades, brother." The climax of Round Three came just at its conclusion, after an exhibition of "footwork" that kept the audience clapping. From sparring at long range, the fighters, as though in simultaneous response to the same idea, jumped in close. Their work was so rapid that only those in the front ringside seats saw the terrific jab, all the power of shoulder and torso behind it, with which Cluett tried for the jaw-point, missed by a hair's-width, and stepped back with blood streaming from a contusion, half-cut, half-bruise, above his eye, where the stranger had countered, rapid as rifle-fire, before he could move out of range. During the rest between Rounds Three and Four, it became almost necessary for the half-crazed Mr. Masterman to be put out of the ring by main force, as he pushed in, caught Cluett by one arm, and tried, in spite of the expostulation of the referee, the reporters, and those in the adjoining ringside seats, and the grinning resistance of Cluett himself, to haul from the ring the champion whose laurel crown he regarded as now no more than perched precariously on the very edge of Nick's scalp. "Come on!" he said, tugging redly and furiously; "he won't take off his mask, and this bout should have b'en off two rounds ago. Come on--out you come!" "Don't make me smile, Bob," observed Mr. Cluett, wryly but tolerantly, as the seconds, working on the cut over his eye, made it smart momentarily with the caustic they were using to stop the blood; "my lips are cracked. Ta-ake it easy. Leggo now--leggo!" There was no opposing the note in the last word. Mr. Masterman, grumblingly releasing the arm he held, stepped back through the ropes. "All right," was his final shot; "it's your funeral, Nick." "There ain't goin' to be no funeral," said Mr. Cluett, "didn't I tell you to keep your shirt on. Have I ever fell down on a bet, th' whole time you've knew me? Have I?" "Well," retorted his manager, "all I know is, you're pretty near due to lose on points, unless you can make this last round all yours."