ed round the corner.

Then for a time everybody was busy with a gun. For three minutes lives
were cheap at the Experimental Farm, and the banging of guns filled the
air. Redwood, careless of Bensington in his excitement, rushed in
pursuit, and was knocked headlong by a mass of brick fragments, mortar,
plaster, and rotten lath splinters that came flying out at him as a
bullet whacked through the wall.

He found himself sitting on the ground with blood on his hands and lips,
and a great stillness brooded over all about him.

Then a flattish voice from within the house remarked: "Gee-whizz!"

"Hullo!" said Redwood.

"Hullo there!" answered the voice.

And then: "Did you chaps get 'im?"

A sense of the duties of friendship returned to Redwood. "Is Mr.
Bensington hurt?" he said.

The man inside heard imperfectly. "No one ain't to blame if I ain't,"
said the voice inside.

It became clearer to Redwood that he must have shot Bensington. He
forgot the cuts upon his face, arose and came back to find Bensington
seated on the ground and rubbing his shoulder. Bensington looked over
his glasses. "We peppered him, Redwood," he said, and then: "He tried to
jump over me, and knocked me down. But I let him have it with both
barrels, and my! how it has hurt my shoulder, to be sure."

A man appeared in the doorway. "I got him once in the chest and once in
the side," he said.

"Where's the waggons?" said Cossar, appearing amidst a thicket of
gigantic canary-creeper leaves.

It became evident, to Redwood's amazement, first, that no one had been
shot, and, secondly, that the trolley and waggon had shifted fifty
yards, and were now standing with interlocked wheels amidst the tangled
distortions of Skinner's kitchen garden. The horses had stopped their
plunging. Half-way towards them, the burst barrel of sulphur lay in the
path with a cloud of sulphur dust above it. He indicated this to Cossar
and walked towards it. "Has any one seen that rat?" shouted Cossar,
following. "I got him in between the ribs once, and once in the face as
he turned on me."

They were joined by two men, as they worried at the locked wheels.

"I killed that rat," said one of the men.

"Have they got him?" asked Cossar.

"Jim Bates has found him, beyond the hedge. I got him jest as he came
round the corner.... Whack behind the shoulder...."

When things were a little ship-shape again Redwood went and stared at
the huge misshapen corpse. The brute la