We found two of my roommates smoking and talking before the tiny open fire. Talbot Ward, full of the business in hand, rushed directly at the matter once the introductions were over. Our arrangements were very simple; the chairs were few and pushed back easily, and we had an old set of gloves. "Which is it to be?" I asked my guest, "boxing or wrestling?" "I said you couldn't _lick_ me," he replied. "Boxing is a game with rules; it isn't fighting at all." "You want to bite and gouge and scratch, then?" said I, greatly amused. "I do not; they would not be fair; a fight's a fight; but a man can be decent with it all. We'll put on the gloves, and we'll hit and wrestle both--in fact, we'll fight." He began rapidly to strip. "Would you expect to get off your clothes in a real fight?" I asked him a little sardonically. "If I _expected_ to fight, yes!" said he. "Why not? Didn't the Greek and Roman and Hebrew and Hun and every other good old fighter 'strip for the fray' when he got a chance? Of course! Takeoff your shirt, man!" I began also to strip for this strange contest whose rules seemed to be made up from a judicious selection of general principles by Talbot Ward. My opponent's body was as beautiful as his head. The smooth white skin covered long muscles that rippled beneath it with every slightest motion. The chest was deep, the waist and hips narrow, the shoulders well rounded. In contrast my own big prominent muscles, trained by heavy farm work of my early youth, seemed to move slowly, to knot sluggishly though powerfully. Nevertheless I judged at a glance that my strength could not but prove greater than his. In a boxing match his lithe quickness might win--provided he had the skill to direct it. But in a genuine fight, within the circumscribed and hampering dimensions of our little room, I thought my own rather unusual power must crush him. The only unknown quantity was the spirit or gameness of us two. I had no great doubt of my own determination in that respect--I had been on too many log-drives to fear personal encounter. And certainly Talbot Ward seemed to show nothing but eager interest. "You don't show up for what you are in your clothes," said he. "This is going to be more fun than I had thought." My roommates perched on the table and the mantelpiece out of the way. I asked the length of the rounds. "Rounds!" echoed Talbot Ward with a flash of teeth beneath his little moustache. "Did you ever hear of rounds in a real fight?"