"Except gin," said Brown.

Harriwell called himself an absent-minded idiot and rushed for the gin
bottle.

"Neat, man, neat," he warned Bertie, who gulped down a tumbler
two-thirds full of the raw spirits, and coughed and choked from the
angry bite of it till the tears ran down his cheeks.

Harriwell took his pulse and temperature, made a show of looking out
for him, and doubted that the omelet had been poisoned. Brown and
McTavish also doubted; but Bertie discerned an insincere ring in their
voices. His appetite had left him, and he took his own pulse
stealthily under the table. There was no question but what it was
increasing, but he failed to ascribe it to the gin he had taken.
McTavish, rifle in hand, went out on the veranda to reconnoitre.

"They're massing up at the cook-house," was his report. "And they've
no end of Sniders. My idea is to sneak around on the other side and
take them in flank. Strike the first blow, you know. Will you come
along, Brown?"

Harriwell ate on steadily, while Bertie discovered that his pulse had
leaped up five beats. Nevertheless, he could not help jumping when the
rifles began to go off. Above the scattering of Sniders could be heard
the pumping of Brown's and McTavish's Winchesters--all against a
background of demoniacal screeching and yelling.

"They've got them on the run," Harriwell remarked, as voices and
gunshots faded away in the distance.

Scarcely were Brown and McTavish back at the table when the latter
reconnoitred.

"They've got dynamite," he said.

"Then let's charge them with dynamite," Harriwell proposed.

Thrusting half a dozen sticks each into their pockets and equipping
themselves with lighted cigars, they started for the door. And just
then it happened. They blamed McTavish for it afterward, and he
admitted that the charge had been a trifle excessive. But at any rate
it went off under the house, which lifted up corner-wise and settled
back on its foundations. Half the china on the table was shattered,
while the eight-day clock stopped. Yelling for vengeance, the three
men rushed out into the night, and the bombardment began.

When they returned, there was no Bertie. He had dragged himself away
to the office, barricaded himself in, and sunk upon the floor in a
gin-soaked nightmare, wherein he died a thousand deaths while the
valorous fight went on around him. In the morning, sick and headachy
from the gin, he crawled out to find the sun