their play, and at only the near tables did they evince any
interest in the affair.

"Knock'm down an' drag'm out!" Del Bishop grinned, as he fought for a
brief space shoulder to shoulder with Corliss.

Corliss grinned back, met the rush of a stalwart dog-driver with a
clinch, and came down on top of him among the stamping feet. He was
drawn close, and felt the fellow's teeth sinking into his ear. Like a
flash, he surveyed his whole future and saw himself going one-eared
through life, and in the same dash, as though inspired, his thumbs flew
to the man's eyes and pressed heavily on the balls. Men fell over him
and trampled upon him, but it all seemed very dim and far away. He
only knew, as he pressed with his thumbs, that the man's teeth wavered
reluctantly. He added a little pressure (a little more, and the man
would have been eyeless), and the teeth slackened and slipped their
grip.

After that, as he crawled out of the fringe of the melee and came to
his feet by the side of the bar, all distaste for fighting left him.
He had found that he was very much like other men after all, and the
imminent loss of part of his anatomy had scraped off twenty years of
culture. Gambling without stakes is an insipid amusement, and Corliss
discovered, likewise, that the warm blood which rises from hygienic
gymnasium work is something quite different from that which pounds
hotly along when thew matches thew and flesh impacts on flesh and the
stake is life and limb. As he dragged himself to his feet by means of
the bar-rail, he saw a man in a squirrel-skin parka lift a beer-mug to
hurl at Trethaway, a couple of paces off. And the fingers, which were
more used to test-tubes and water colors, doubled into a hard fist
which smote the mug-thrower cleanly on the point of the jaw. The man
merely dropped the glass and himself on the floor. Vance was dazed for
the moment, then he realized that he had knocked the man
unconscious,--the first in his life,--and a pang of delight thrilled
through him.

Colonel Trethaway thanked him with a look, and shouted, "Get on the
outside! Work to the door, Corliss! Work to the door!"

Quite a struggle took place before the storm-doors could be thrown
open; but the colonel, still attached to the three-legged stool,
effectually dissipated the opposition, and the Opera House disgorged
its turbulent contents into the street. This accomplished, hostilities
ceased, after the manner of such fights,