Then Mike goes into the rear room and dons blue tights, blue sleeveless shirt, canvas trunks, and light shoes; his working costume. Over these he draws trousers and a blue sweater; on top of all a heavy double-breasted jacket. Thrusting his feet, light shoes and all, into heavy snow-proof overshoes, and pulling on a bicycle cap, Mike is arrayed for the street. Mollie knows of these several preparations, the ring costume under the street clothes, but thinks naught of it, such being Mike’s nightly custom as he departs for the academy of Professor O’Punch. At the last moment, Mike kisses both Mollie and little Davy; and then, with a sudden original enthusiasm, he says: “I’ve been thinkin’, Mollie; mebby I can get some money. Mebby we’ll see a good Christmas, after all.” Mollie is dazed by the notion of Mike thinking; but she looks in his face, with its honest eyes full of love for her and Davy, and as beautiful as a god’s and as unsophisticated, and in spite of herself a hope begins to live and lift up its head. Possibly Mike may get money; and Christmas, and the rent, and many another matter then pinching the baby housekeeper and of which she has made no mention to Mike, will be met and considered. “It’ll be nice if you should get money, Mike,” is all Mollie trusts herself to say, as she returns Mike’s good-bye kiss. When Mike gets into Pitt Street he moves slowly. There’s the crowd, for one thing. Then, too, it’s over early for his contest with the Terror. Mike prefers to arrive at the theatre just in time to strip and make the required application for those two hundred dollars. It may appear strange, but it never once occurs to Mike that he will not last the demanded four rounds. But it seems such a weighty sum! Mike doubts if the offer be earnest; hesitates with the fear that the management will refuse to give him the money at the end. “But surely,” decides Mike, “they will feel as though they ought to give me something. I lose a dollar by not going to Professor O’Punch’s; they must take account of that.” Mike loiters along with much inborn ease of heart. Occasionally he pauses to gaze into one of the cheap shop windows, ablaze and garish of the season’s wares. There is no wind; the air has no point; but it is snowing softly, persistently, flakes of a mighty size and softness. Ten minutes before he arrives at that theatre which has been the scene of the Terror’s triumphs, Mike enters a bakery whereof the proprietor, a German, is known to him. Mike has no money but he feels no confusion for that. “John,” says Mike to the German; “I’ve got to spar a little to-night and I want a big plate of soup.” “Sure!” says John, leading the way to a rear room which thrives greasily as a kind of restaurant. “And here, Mike,” goes on John, as the soup arrives, “I’ll put a big drink of sherry in it. You will feel good because of it, and the sherry and the hot soup will make you quick and strong already.”