The big shouldered boy near the door shifted his position a little. He leaned forward until he could see Judge Maynard's round, red face a little more distinctly. There was an odd expression upon Denny Bolton's features when the fat man in brown lifted his eyes from his notebook, eyes that twinkled with sympathetic comprehension. "----That it was better a bad egg than an omelette, eh?" he interrupted knowingly. The Judge pounded his knee and rocked with mirth. "Well, that's just about it--that's just about as near as words could come to it," he managed to gasp, and the circle behind him rocked, too, and pounded its knee as one man. The man on the desk went on working industriously with his pencil, even while he was speaking. "And then I suppose he was pretty good with his hands, too, even when he was a little shaver?" he suggested tentatively. "But then I don't suppose that any one of you ever dreamed that you had a world's champion, right here at home, in the making, did you?" The whole room leaned nearer. Even the late comer near the door forgot himself entirely and took one step forward, his narrowing gray eyes straining upon the Judge's face. Judge Maynard again weighed his reply, word for word. "We-e-ll, no," he admitted. "I don't believe I can say that I downright believed that he'd make a world's champion. Don't believe's I could truthfully state that I thought that. But I guess there isn't anybody in this town that would ever deny but what I did say more than once that he'd make the best of 'em hustle--ye-e-s, sir, the very best of 'em, some day!" The speaker turned to face the hushed room behind him, as if to challenge contradiction, and Young Denny, waiting for some one to speak, touched his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. But no contradiction came. Instead Old Jerry, leaning across the Judge's broad back, quavered breathlessly. "That's jest it--that's jest as it was--right to a hair. It was system done it--system right from the very beginning. And many's the time the Judge says to me--says he----" Old Jerry never finished, for Judge Maynard lifted one hand majestically and the little white-haired old man's eager corroboration died on his lips. He shrank back into abashed silence, his lips working wordlessly. "As I was saying," the Judge then proceeded ponderously, "I recognized he had what one could call--er----" "Class?" the man on the desk broke in again with his engaging smile. "Well, yes," the other continued, "or, as I was about to call it, talent. From the very first that was very apparent, but then, of course, a man in my position in the community could scarcely have been the one to encourage him openly. But he was pretty good, even as a little shaver! Why, there was nothing among the boys that he wouldn't tackle--absolutely nothing! Size, sir, never made any difference to him--not a particle. Jeddy Conway fight----!"