Ogden stopped urging the wet towel upon him and stood and gazed at him with something close akin to awe in his eyes. "Hard!" he echoed in a small voice. "Hard! How hard do you expect a man to hit?" "Then your plan was wrong," Young Denny told him. "Of course," he hastened to soften that abrupt statement, "of course it would work all right, only--only I'm not much good at that kind of fancy work. I--I just have to wade right in, when I want to do any damage, because I'm slow getting away from a man. I can't punch--not hard--when I'm backing off. But now I aim to show you how hard I expect a man to hit, just as soon as they ring that bell!" Hogarty was leaning over Sutton in the opposite corner, frowning and talking rapidly. "What's the matter, Boots?" he demanded anxiously. "Haven't lost your kick, have you?" Sutton gazed contemplatively down at his gloved hands and up again into his employer's face. "Who'd you say that guy was?" he countered. "Where's he blowed in from--again?" "A rube--down from the hills he called it. Just some come-on," Hogarty repeated his former information, "who thinks because he's cleaned up main street and licked the village blacksmith that he's a world-beater. Why, Boots? You aren't worried, are you?" The contemplative gleam in Sutton's eyes deepened. "Because," he stated thoughtfully, "just because there's some mistake--or--or he's made of brass. I--I hit him pretty hard, Flash--and do you know what he done? Well, he blinked. He--blinked--at--me. I never hit any man harder." Hogarty's face had lost a little of its inscrutability. He flashed one sharp glance across at Young Denny in the other corner as he stepped back out of the ring and his frown deepened a little after that brief scrutiny. For the boy's body, squatting there, crouched waiting for the bell, was taut in every sinew, quivering with eagerness. "You just failed to place 'em right, I guess," he reassured Boots. "Take a little more time, and get him flush on the bone. You can slow up a little. He isn't even fast enough to run away from you." Again Hogarty nodded to the boy called Legs, and again the gong rang. Five minutes earlier it would have been hard for Bobby Ogden to have explained just what it was which he had half dreamed might lurk in those rippling muscles that bunched and ran beneath Denny's white skin. For want of a better name he had named it speed. And now, at the tap of the bell, he watched and recognized.