She went quickly forward to where she saw her father. Impatient way was made for her. Japhra was talking earnestly to Percival, and they scarcely seemed to notice her. She slipped down beside them, her knees against the canvas, and sat on her heels, her hands clasped at their full extension. She had said she would not come. She had found she must. While she had been with Percival waiting Japhra's return after the scene with Pinsent he had begun the contrition he had come to her to express. She suffered him nothing of it. "That is left where we laid it among the bracken," she told him. "Let it abide there. Look already what has come of it. If I had stayed with thee, this had not happened." But her leaving him, and why she left, and his following her, and what came then, were of the train of the tricks and chances that shaped for him this day. III Boss Maddox spoke. "They're going to fight," he said, taking up a position against the mast and addressing the gathering in his dry, authoritative way--"They're going to fight, and you can count yourselves lucky to see it. If any one interferes--out he goes. Everything's settled. If any one sees anything he don't think right or according to rule he can go outside and look for it--keep his mouth shut while he's going and go quick. Three minute rounds. One minute breathers. Ten count for the knock-out. Stingo 'll stand here with the watch. I'm referee. And I'm boss--bite on that. Come along, Foxy." Pinsent, who had stepped over the canvas and strolled to the centre of the ring as Ima entered, was still in the long yellow coat, still with his hands in his pockets. He liked to have all those eyes upon him. He liked to give pause and opportunity for the thought that this fine figure standing here had fought in class rings and bore a reputation that gentlemen in shirt-fronts had paid gold to see at battle. He suffered usually a slight nervousness at the first moment of stepping into those class rings: to-night and here he had an exultant feeling, and he carried it with a most effective swagger. He knew Percival could box. He had watched him spar in Japhra's booth. He knew, to express his own thoughts, there 'd be a little bit of mixin' up at the outset; but he knew, as only Japhra among them all also knew, that to his own skill that had put him in a good rank of his weight he added the experience, the craft, the morale of a score and more class fights, and that such a quality is to be reckoned as a third arm against that poor thing--a "novice." "A novice, Boss!" he had said to Boss Maddox an hour before. "A novice--I lay there's more'n a few 'ud stop this fight if they knew what I was fighting. 'Strewth! I'd not do it myself but for what I've been saving up against the whelp!"