voice. "You take that back, or
I'll kill you right where you stand!"

"Do him up, Tim!" shouted the other ruffian; but Tim hesitated. "I'll do
him, then," said the other man. "I owe him one myself."

He caught up a strip of board which was lying on the ground near, but
one of the Norwegian workmen put his foot on it, and before he could
command his weapon, Arthur brought a pail which he held in his right
hand down upon his opponent's head.

The man fell as if dead, and the pail shattered into its original
staves. Arthur turned then to face Tim, his hands doubled into mauls;
but the other men interfered, and the encounter was over.

Arthur waited to see if the fallen man could rise, and then turned away
reeling and breathless. For an hour afterward his hands shook so badly
that he could not go on with his work.

At first he determined to go to Richards, the foreman, and demand the
discharge of the two tramps, but as he thought of the explanation
necessary, he gave it up as impossible.

He almost wept with shame and despair at the thought of her name having
been mixed in the tumult. He had meant to kill when he struck, and the
nervous prostration which followed showed him how far he had gone. He
had not had a fight since he was thirteen years of age, and now
everything seemed lost in the light of his murderous rage. It would all
come out sooner or later, and she would despise him.

He went to see the man just before going to supper, and found him in his
barracks, sitting near a pail of cold water from which he was splashing
his head at intervals.

He looked up as Arthur entered, but went on with his ministrations;
after a pause he said:

"That was a terrible lick you give me, young feller--brought the blood
out of my ears."

"I meant to kill you," was Arthur's grim reply.

"I know you did. If that darned Norse hadn't put his foot on that board
_you'd_ be doing this." He lifted a handful of water to his swollen and
aching head.

"What did you go to that board for? Why didn't you stand up like a man?"

"Because you were swinging that bucket."

"Oh, bosh! You were a coward as well as a blackguard."

The man looked up with a gleam in his eye.

"See here, young feller--if this head----"

Arthur's face darkened, and the man stopped short.

"Now listen, Dan Williams, I want to tell you something. I'm not going
to report this. I'm going to let you stay here till you're well, and
then I want this thing settl