“Sport!” cried the woman, bitterly.  “A fine sport for you, Sir Charles, with your pleasant twenty-mile drive into the country and your luncheon-basket and your wines, and so merrily back to London in the cool of the evening, with a well-fought battle to talk over.  Think of the sport that it was to me to sit through the long hours, listening for the wheels of the chaise which would bring my man back to me.  Sometimes he could walk in, and sometimes he was led in, and sometimes he was carried in, and it was only by his clothes that I could know him—­”

“Come, wifie,” said Harrison, patting her on the shoulder.  “I’ve been cut up in my time, but never as bad as that.”

“And then to live for weeks afterwards with the fear that every knock at the door may be to tell us that the other is dead, and that my man may have to stand in the dock and take his trial for murder.”

“No, she hasn’t got a sportin’ drop in her veins,” said Harrison.  “She’d never make a patron, never!  It’s Black Baruk’s business that did it, when we thought he’d napped it once too often.  Well, she has my promise, and I’ll never sling my hat over the ropes unless she gives me leave.”

“You’ll keep your hat on your head like an honest, God-fearing man, John,” said his wife, turning back into the house.

“I wouldn’t for the world say anything to make you change your resolutions,” said my uncle.  “At the same time, if you had wished to take a turn at the old sport, I had a good thing to put in your way.”

“Well, it’s no use, sir,” said Harrison, “but I’d be glad to hear about it all the same.”

“They have a very good bit of stuff at thirteen stone down Gloucester way.  Wilson is his name, and they call him Crab on account of his style.”

Harrison shook his head.  “Never heard of him, sir.”

“Very likely not, for he has never shown in the P.R.  But they think great things of him in the West, and he can hold his own with either of the Belchers with the mufflers.”

“Sparrin’ ain’t fightin’,” said the smith

“I am told that he had the best of it in a by-battle with Noah James, of Cheshire.”

“There’s no gamer man on the list, sir, than Noah James, the guardsman,” said Harrison.  “I saw him myself fight fifty rounds after his jaw had been cracked in three places.  If Wilson could beat him, Wilson will go far.”

“So they think in the West, and they mean to spring him on the London talent.  Sir Lothian Hume is his patron, and to make a long story short, he lays me odds that I won’t find a young one of his weight to meet him.  I told him that I had not heard of any good young ones, but that I had an old one who had not put his foot into a ring for many years, who would make his man wish he had never come to London.

“’Young or old, under twenty or over thirty-five, you may bring whom you will at the weight, and I shall lay two to one on Wilson,’ said he.  I took him in thousands, and here I am.”