red-streaked face.

"Why, it was an accident, officer," he answered. "I slipped down and
hit my own self a wallop, jest like you said. Anyway, it don't amount
to nothin'."

"You seen what happened, didn't you?" went on the policeman,
addressing the station master. "It was a pure accident, wasn't it?"

"That's what it was--a pure accident," stated the station master.

"Then, to your knowledge, there wasn't no row of any sort occurring
round here to-night?" went on the policeman.

"Not that I heard of."

"Well, if there had a-been you'd a-heard of it, wouldn't you?"

"Sure I would!"

"That's good," said the policeman. He jabbed a gloved thumb toward
the two witnesses. "Then, see here, Harris! Bein' as it was an
accident pure and simple and your own fault besides, nobody--no
outsider--couldn't a-had nothin' to do with your gettin' hurt, could
he?"

"Not a thing in the world," replied Harris.

"Not a thing in the world," echoed the station master.

"And you ain't got any charge to make against anybody for what was due
to your own personal awkwardness, have you?" suggested the blue-coated
prompter.

"Certainly I ain't!" disclaimed Harris almost indignantly.

Mallard broke in: "You can't do this--you men," he declared hoarsely.
"I struck that man and I'm glad I did strike him--damn him! I wish I'd
killed him. I'm willing to take the consequences. I demand that you
make a report of this case to your superior officer."

As though he had not heard him--as though he did not know a fourth
person was present--the policeman, looking right past Mallard with a
levelled, steady, contemptuous gaze, addressed the other two. His tone
was quite casual, and yet somehow he managed to freight his words with
a scorn too heavy to be expressed in mere words:

"Boys," he said, "it seems-like to me the air in this room is so kind
of foul that it ain't fitten for good Amuricans to be breathin' it.
So I'm goin' to open up this here door and see if it don't purify
itself--of its own accord."

He stepped back and swung the door wide open; then stepped over and
joined the station master and the sweeper. And there together they all
three stood without a word from any one of them as the fourth man,
with his face deadly white now where before it had been a passionate
red, and his head lolling on his breast, though he strove to hold it
rigidly erect, passed silently out of the little office. Through the
opened door the trio with their