nd!" he commanded.
The command was absurd, and he laughed savagely, tickled by its
absurdity even in his fury, while he smote again and again.
He showered blows until, between blow and blow, he caught his breath
and panted. Mr. Silk's screams had sunk to blubbings and whimpers.
Between the strokes he heard them.

His valet was knocking timorously on the door. "All right!" called
Langton, lifting his cane and lowering it slowly--for his victim lay
still. He stooped to drag aside the arm covering the huddled face.
As he did so, Mr. Silk snarled again, raised his head and bit
blindly, fastening his teeth in the flesh of the left hand. Langton
wrenched free and, as the man scrambled to his feet, dealt him with
the same hand a smashing blow on the mouth--a blow that sent him
reeling, to overbalance and pitch backward to the floor again across
an overturned chair.

Somehow the pleasure of getting in that blow restored--literally at a
stroke--Langton's good temper. He laughed and tossed the cane into a
corner.

"You may stand up now," said he sweetly. "You are not going to be
beaten any more."

Mr. Silk stood up. His mouth trickled blood, and he nursed his right
wrist, where the cane had smitten across the bone. Langton stepped
to the door and, unlocking it, admitted his trembling valet.

"My good fool," he said, "didn't I call to you not to be alarmed?
Mr. Silk, here, has been seized with a--a kind of epileptic fit.
Help him downstairs and call a chair for him. Don't stare; he will
not bite again for a very long time."

But in this Mr. Langton was mistaken.

He took the precaution of cauterising his bitten hand; and before
retiring to rest that night contemplated it grimly, holding it out to
the warmth of his bachelor fire. It was bandaged; but above the edge
of the bandage his knuckles bore evidence how they had retaliated
upon Mr. Silk's teeth.

He eyed these abrasions for a while and ended with a soft complacent
laugh. "Queer, how little removed we are, after all, from the
natural savage!" he murmured. "Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to
introduce to your notice Batty Langton, Esquire, a child of nature--
not perhaps of the best period--still using his naked fists and for a
woman--primitive cause of quarrel. And didn't he enjoy it, by
George!"

He laughed again softly. But, could he have foreseen, he had been
willing rather to cut the hand off for its day's work.

Chapter IV.

THE TERR