Beadle's Dime Library, No. 823

# The Athlete Sport About Town; or, The Escaped Sing Sing Convict's Champion

By William H. Manning. This serial opens in New York where Cassius Rand, a sick, hungry wanderer, breaks into a back parlor to rest. While hidden behind a screen, the beautiful Irena Payne enters the room and encounters Danny Fox, an escaped convict from Sing Sing Prison, who pleads for shelter. Fox claims Irena knew him as a free man before his arrest for a crime of passion. When Irena threatens to call her father and uncle—Police Commissioner Chesterham Payne—Fox coerces her into hiding him in a closet by threatening to reveal their past association and implicate her reputation. The fragment ends with Commissioner Payne entering the parlor, unaware of Fox's presence.