"Look here, guv'nor," he whispered with good intent, "the back door's open,--run like the devil." I turned to him in mild surprise. "Don't be an ijit," he went on. "Git. Why! he's Tommy Flynn, the champion rib cracker and face pusher of Harlford, here on his holidays." "Tommy Flynn," I answered, "Tommy Rot fits him better." "You ain't a-going to stand up and get hit, are you?" "What else is there for me to do?" I asked. He threw up his arms despairingly. "Lor' lumme!--then I bids you good-bye and washes my hands clean of you." And he went round behind the counter in disgust, spitting among the sawdust. By this time, Tommy Flynn, the champion rib cracker and face pusher, was rolling up his sleeves businesslike and thrusting off his numerous seconds in his anxiety to get at me. "'Ere, Splotch," he cried to a one-eyed bosom friend of his, "'old my watch, while I joggles the puddins out of this kid with a left 'ander. My heye!--'e won't be no blooming golfing swell in another 'alf minute." He grinned at me a few times in order to hypnotise me with his beauty and to instil in me the necessary amount of frightfulness, before he got to work in earnest. Then, by way of invitation, he thrust forward his jaw almost into my face. I took advantage of his offer somewhat more quickly than he anticipated. I struck him on the chin with my left and drew my right to his body. But his chin was hard as flint and it bruised my knuckles; while his great body was podgy and of an india-rubberlike flexibility. For my pains, he brushed my ear and drew a little blood, with the grin of an ape on his brutish face. He threw up his arms to guard, feinted at me, and rushed in. I parried his blows successfully, much to his surprise, for I could see his eyes widening and a wrinkle in his brow. "Careful, Tommy!--careful," cautioned Splotch of the one eye. "He's a likely looking young bloke." "Likely be blowed," said Tommy shortly, as he toyed with me. "Watch this!" I saw that it would be for my own good, the less I let my antagonist know of my ability at his own game, and I knew also I would have to play caution with my strength all the way, owing to the trying ordeals I had already gone through that day. Once, my antagonist tried to draw me as he would draw a novice. I ignored the body bait he opened up for me and, instead, I swung in quickly with my right on to his bruised nose, with all the energy I could muster. He staggered and reeled like a drunken man. In fact, had he not been half-besotted by dear-only-knows how many days of debauchery, it might have gone hard with me, but now he positively howled with pain. I had hit on his most vulnerable part, right at the beginning. Something inside of me chuckled, for, if there was one special place in any man's anatomy that I always had been able to reach, it was his nose. Flynn rushed on me again and again. I was lucky indeed in beating back his onslaughts.