chair wrapped in blankets, Marcia sat beside him, talking in subdued tones.  Sometimes I heard their voices raised, but whatever their differences they were not such as to cause a breach between them.  They were hardly ever entirely alone and for purposes of endearment the terrace was not the most secluded spot that could have been found.  Flynn’s word was law and his eye constantly watchful.  If he had been paid to make Jerry win this fight, he was going to earn his money, he said, and anyone who interfered with the training would be put out and kept out of the grounds.  Whatever her own wishes, the girl recognized Flynn’s authority, and came and went at fixed times which could not interfere with the rigid rules.  Jerry rose at five and took to the road with Flynn on horseback and either O’Halloran or Sagorski afoot.  When he came in he had his shower, rubdown and then breakfast.  After a rest, Flynn boxed four or five rounds with him, after which came rope jumping, and exercises with the machines to strengthen his arms and wrists.  In this way the morning passed and after the midday meal came the real work-out of the day with his training-partners, where real blows were exchanged and blood often flowed.  Jerry had improved immeasurably.  Even I, tyro as I was, could see that his encounters with these professionals had rubbed off all signs of the amateur.  He had always been a good judge of distance, Flynn had said, but he had been schooled recently to make every movement count—­to “waste nothing.”  In spite of myself, the excitement of the game was getting into my blood.  If for the while Jerry was to be a beast, why should he not be the best beast of them all?  Stories came to us from the camp of the Terrible Sailor, who was training down on the Jersey shore.  He was “coming” fast, they said, and was strong and confident.  The newspapers followed him carefully and sent their reporters to Horsham Manor, one of whom, denied entrance at the Lodge, climbed over the wall and even reached the gymnasium where Jerry was boxing with O’Halloran, to be put out at my orders (as Jeremiah Benham) before he got a fact for his pains.  The result of this of course was an account full of misstatements about the millionaire Jeremiah Benham and his protege which brought a protest in the mails from Ballard the elder who, fortunately for Jerry, hadn’t gotten at the truth of the matter.

Once or twice I had been on the point of going to Ballard’s office and making a clean breast of Jerry’s plans, hoping that Clancy might be bought off and the match canceled.  But I could not bring myself, even now, to the point of betraying the boy.  I am not a fatalist by profession or philosophy, but Miss Gore had made me pause and I had resolved to see the thing through, trying to believe as she believed that Jerry could only be toughened to the usages of life by the rigor of circumstance.  And so I was silent.