And they called it a miracle––that recovery. They called it a miracle of the mind over a body already beaten beyond endurance. For in the scant thirty seconds which were left, while the boy lay back with them working desperately above him, it was almost possible to see the strength ebbing back into his 293 veins. They dashed water upon his head, inverted bottles of it into his face, and emptied it from his eyes, but during that long half minute the vague smile never left his lips––nor his eyes the face of Conway across from him.
And he went to meet The Red when the gong called to them again. He went to meet him––smiling!
The bell seemed to pick him up and drop him in the middle of the ring. Set for the shock he stopped Conway’s hurtling attack. And when The Red swung he tightened, took the blow flush on the side of the face, and only rocked a little.
Conway’s chin seemed to lift to receive the blow which he started then from the waist. That right hand, flashing up, found it and straightened The Red back––lifted him to his toes. And while he was still in the air The Pilgrim measured and swung. The left glove caught him flush below the ear; it picked him up and drove him crashing back into the corner from which he had just come.
Old Jerry saw them bend over him––saw them pick him up at last and slip him through the ropes. Then he realized that the referee was holding Young Denny’s right hand aloft; that Hogarty, with arms about him, was holding the boy erect.
The little mail-carrier heard the ex-lightweight’s words, as he edged in beside Morehouse, against the ropes.
“A world-beater,” he was screaming above the tumult. “I’ll make a world-beater of you in a year!”
And The Pilgrim, still smiling vaguely, shook his head a little.
“Maybe,” he answered faintly. “Maybe I’ll come back. I don’t know––yet. But now––now I reckon I’d better be going along home!”