Father Layonne had found it necessary to play his full hand to lure Fingers up the hill, and had given him a hint of what it was that Kent had in store for him.

Already the psychological key had begun to work.
Kent sat down on the edge of his cot and grinned sympathetically.

"It hasn't always been like this, has it, Fingers ?" he said then, leaning a bit forward and speaking with a sudden, low-voiced seriousness.

"There was a time, twenty years ago, when you didn't puff after climbing a hill.

Twenty years make a big difference, sometimes." "Yes, sometimes," agreed Fingers in a wheezy whisper.
"Twenty years ago you were--a fighter." It seemed to Kent that a deeper color came into Dirty Fingers' pale eyes in the few seconds that followed these words.
"A fighter," he repeated.