for his tongue was paralyzed and his lips were dry.

"_Did you kill those people by the Silent Pools?_"

The awful man at the table was beginning to work himself up. He had risen
at the second question, and at the third time of asking he seized Meeus by
the shoulders. "_Did you kill those people----?_"

"Punishment," stuttered Meeus.

A cry like the cry of a woman and a crash that shook the plaster from the
ceiling, followed the fatal word. Adams had swung the man aloft and dashed
him against the wall with such force, that the wattling gave and the
plaster fell in flakes.

Meeus lay still as death, staring at his executioner with a face
expressionless and white as the plaster flakes around him.

"Get up," said Adams.

Meeus heard and moved his arms.

"Get up."

Again the arms moved and the body raised itself, but the legs did not
move. "I cannot," said Meeus.

Adams came to him and bending down pinched his right thigh hard.

"Do you feel me touching you?"

"No."

Adams did the same to the other thigh.

"Do you feel that?"

"No."

"Lie there," said Adams.

He opened the door and went out into the night. A moment later he
returned; after him came the two porters bearing Berselius between them.

Berselius was quiet now; the brain fever that had stricken him had passed
into a muttering stage, and he let himself be carried, passive as a bag of
meal, whilst Adams went before with the lamp leading the way into the
bedroom. Here, on one of the beds, the porters laid their burden down.
Then they came back, and under the directions of Adams lifted Meeus and
carried him into the bedroom and placed him on the second bed.

Adams, with the lamp in his hand, stood for a moment looking at Meeus. His
rage had spent itself; he had avenged the people at the Silent Pools. With
his naked hands he had inflicted on the criminal before him an injury
worse than the injury of fire or sword.

Meeus, frightened now by the pity in the face of the other, horribly
frightened by the unknown thing that had happened to him, making him dead
from the waist down, moved his lips, but made no sound.

"Your back is broken," replied Adams to the question in the other's eyes.

Then he turned to Berselius.

* * * * *

At midnight the rains broke with a crash of thunder that seemed to shake
the universe.

Adams, worn out, was seated at the table in the living room smoking some
tobacco he