ch the drawings of molten slag were run out
to be spilled down the face of the declivity. There had been no
slag-drawing since the new "blow-in" earlier in the day; but while he
was watching to keep Farley in sight in the intervals between the
gas-flares, Gordon was conscious of the note of preparation behind him:
the slackening of the blast, the rattle and clank of the dinkey
locomotive pushing the dumping ladle into place under the furnace lip.

Farley had taken two or three scrambling steps up the rough-seamed
declivity when the workmen tapped the furnace. There was a sputtering
roar and the air was filled with coruscating sparks.

Then the stream of molten matter began to pour into the great ladle, a
huge eight-foot pot swung on tilting trunnions and mounted on a skeleton
flat-car; and for Gordon, standing at the corner of the ore shed with
his back to the slag drawers, the red glow picked out the man scrambling
up the miniature mountain of cooled scoria,--this man and another man
running swiftly to overtake him.

He looked on coldly until he saw Kincaid head off the retreat and face
his adversary. Instantly there was a spurt of fire from a pistol in
Farley's right hand, a brief flash with the report swallowed up in the
roar from the furnace lip. Then the two men closed and rolled together
to the bottom of the slope, and Gordon turned his back.

When he looked again the trampling note of the big blast-engines had
quickened to its normal beat, the blow-hole was plugged with its stopper
of damp clay, and a red twilight born of the reflection from the
surface of the great pot of seething slag had succeeded to the blinding
glare. Where there had been two men locked in struggle there was now
only one, and he was lying quietly with one leg doubled under him.
Gordon set his teeth on an angry oath of disappointment. Had Kincaid
broken his compact?

The first long-drawn exhaust of the dinkey engine moving the slag kettle
out to its spilling place ripped the silence. Gordon heard--and he did
not hear: he was watching the prone figure at the dump's toe. When it
should rise, he meant to fire from where he stood under the eaves of the
ore-shed. The murder-thought contemplated nothing picturesque or
dramatic. It was merely the dry thirst for the blood of a mortal enemy,
as it is wont to be off the stage or out of the pages of the romancers.

The puffing locomotive had pushed the slag-pot car half-way to the
track-end before