It had been he
felt a day of two battles. First the direct brutal battle of fists in
the passageway and then this other battle with the superintendent. He
thought he had won both fights. Of the fight with the tall German he
thought little. He had expected to win that. The other was different.
The superintendent he felt had wanted to patronise him, patting him on
the back and buying him drinks. Instead he had patronised the
superintendent. A battle had gone on in the brains of the two men and
he had won. He had met a new kind of man, one who did not live by the
raw strength of his muscles and he had given a good account of
himself. The conviction that he had, besides a good pair of fists, a
good brain swept in on him glorifying him. He thought of the sentence,
"Brains are intended to help fists," and wondered how he had happened
to think of it.
CHAPTER II
The street in which McGregor lived in Chicago was called Wycliff
Place, after a family of that name that had once owned the land
thereabout. The street was complete in its hideousness. Nothing more
unlovely could be imagined. Given a free hand an indiscriminate lot of
badly trained carpenters and bricklayers had builded houses beside the
cobblestone road that touched the fantastic in their unsightliness and
inconvenience.
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