"Keep your eye peeled, Frank," he advised. "You know what Rabig is and the way he feels toward you. This is just a scheme of his to get even. He isn't coming up here for a friendly bout. He wants to show you up and knock you out if he can."
"Oh, I don't know," said Frank, unconcernedly. "But if he tries on anything like that I'll give him all he's looking for."
Rabig's second, Werner, one of the few friends he had in the regiment and who like himself was suspected of pro-German leanings, or at least lukewarmness in the service, took a long time in putting on his principal's gloves, and Bart, who was watching him with the eye of a hawk, stepped across the platform to witness the operation.
"Let me look at those gloves," he demanded.
"What's the matter with them?" growled Werner.
"This is the matter with them," said Bart, as he pointed to the part just above where the knuckles came and where the stuffing of the glove had been kneaded aside so that a blow given would be almost like one with the bare fist.
"None of that skin-tight business here," said Bart.
He pounded the glove until it was normal and then handed it back, not going to his own corner, however, until they had been fastened on Rabig's hands to his own satisfaction.
"That cur can't play fair in anything," he remarked to Frank as he came back.
The bell rang and the men came from their corners toward the center of the platform.