and grotesque figure in his sleeping-suit,
barefooted, with empty hands. Beyond him still, some one else ran,
stumbling, and sobbed and uttered mad cries.

Ste. Marie dropped his pistol to the ground and sprang upon the
Irishman. He caught him about the body and arms, and the two swayed and
staggered under the tremendous impact. At just that moment, from behind,
came the crash of the opened door and triumphant shouts. Ste. Marie gave
a little gasp of triumph, too, and clung the harder to the man with whom
he fought. He drove his head into the Irishman's shoulder, and set his
muscles with a grip which was like iron. He knew that it could not
endure long, for the Irishman was stronger than he, but the grip of a
nervous man who is keyed up to a high tension is incredibly powerful for
a little while. Trained strength is nothing beside it.

It seemed to Ste. Marie in this desperate moment--it cannot have been
more than a minute or two at the most--that a strange and uncanny
miracle befell him. It was as if he became two. Soul and body, spirit
and straining flesh, seemed to him to separate, to stand apart, each
from the other. There was a thing of iron flesh and thews which had
locked itself about an enemy and clung there madly with but one purpose,
one single thought--to grip and grip, and never loosen until flesh
should be torn from bones. But apart the spirit looked on with a
complete detachment. It looked beyond--he must have raised his head to
glance over O'Hara's shoulder--saw a mad figure staggering forward in
the moonlight, and knew the figure for Captain Stewart. It saw an
upraised arm and was not afraid, for the work was almost done now. It
listened and was glad, hearing the motor-car, without the walls, leap
forward into the night and its puffing grow fainter and fainter with
distance. It knew that the thing of strained sinews received a crashing
blow upon backflung head, and that the iron muscles were slipping away
from their grip, but it was still glad, for the work was done.

Only at the last, before red and whirling lights had obscured the view,
before consciousness was dissolved in unconsciousness, came horror and
agony, for the eyes saw Captain Stewart back away and raise the thing he
had struck with, a large revolver, saw Coira O'Hara, a swift and
flashing figure in the moonlight, throw herself upon him before he could
fire, heard together a woman's scream and the roar of the pistol's
explosion, and then