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 fell on him doin' it. "J'en suis très fâché, mon ami!" he pants with a crimson smile.

The Frenchman stops short with a look of absolute surprise on his face which would of been comical if the situation hadn't been what it was. The idea of this poor battered boob, which could scarcely see and which he had fouled from the go in, apologizin' for a plain accident seemed to paralyze him for a second. He faltered in his stride, unconsciously lowerin' his guard, and in that same second the Kid suddenly straightened up and crashed him face down on the gore-spattered canvas with a right hook to the button of the jaw. He never moved a muscle while the dazed referee counted him out—fifteen seconds, accordin' to "Honest Joe" Hammond's stop watch.

So that was that!

On the ways back to Paris I was busy balancin' our cash, and the Kid was talkin' to "Honest Joe," which seemed to have lost ten years of his age somewheres.

"—So when I found I couldn't see, with that oil of mustard biting at my eyes," the Kid was sayin', "I realized that I was in for a severe beating—that Gournet can hit!—unless I met that fellow at his own game, matched him trick for trick. Aside from the first knockdown in the second round, I wasn't floored! I took those falls deliberately to clear my head, to think, and incidentally to allow that stuff to evaporate from my eyes. I decided then to try a little—ah—psychology. I figured that a sudden, unexpected mental shock would momentarily halt the Frenchman's wild lunges—interrupt his thinking apparatus which was timing