mitive nature; but when I looked
up to note that, and how she took Drislane's beating, she had gone.

"Are yuh? Speak up!--are yuh?" bellowed Sickles.

Drislane by now could open his eyes. He looked up at his conqueror but
would not say the word. Sickles dug the toe of his shoe into his side.

I had been waiting, half sick to my stomach, for a good excuse to butt
in. I had marked, when I first came in, a piano-stool setting upside
down atop of the piano to one side of the room. In these possibly
rough-house wind-ups it never does any harm to note where a few little
articles of warfare may be picked up in a hurry. This piano-stool had a
two-inch oak seat.

"You wunt, heh?" Sickles lifted his foot.

"No, he won't!" I butted in, and as he straightened up to see who it
was, I went on: "And don't think I'll be foolish enough to go staving in
my good knuckles on you. See this little wherewithal I'm holding, and
not too loosely, by the wind'ard leg? You've a fine thick skull, but
this is thicker. One cute little wallop o' this amidships of your ears,
and it's little you'll care whether you take the _Orion_ out on the
first or the last of the flood-tide to-morrow. Let him be!"

Now, don't let anybody think I was making a play for any Carnegie medal
thereby. I knew Oliver Sickles, and even better did I know his kind, who
only go to battle when certain victory lies before them. The only chance
I was taking was with my firm's interests. It might be that he'd have
such a grouch against me that he'd carry no more coal for my firm than
he could help in future.

He let him be. He put on his collar and coat, and received as his due
the applause of that crawling breed which are never by any chance seen
shaking hands with anybody but a winner. While he was still at the
hand-shaking I threw him his ship's papers.

I had the bartender order a carriage, and while waiting I tried to cheer
up Drislane. I told him that he must not think of going to sea next day,
that I would see Captain Norman Sickles and get him off, and later go
with him to Boston by rail.

He shook his head. He could hardly part his swollen lips to talk; and
then could only half whisper. "I'll sail to-morrow on the _Sirius_," he
said; and rolled his head over to see what Sickles was doing.

Sickles was just then stepping through that kitchen doorway where but
two minutes earlier Rose had been standing. Drislane closed his eyes;
and then, as if he thought he had t