reets,
singing, and hoarse shouts. Then silence came, then shouts, and silence
again. It was all quiet as he rode up to Jopp's house, standing on the
outskirts of the town. There was a bright light in the window of a room.

Jopp, then, was still up. He would not wait till tomorrow. He would do
the right thing now. He would put things straight with his foe before
he slept; he would do it at any sacrifice to his pride. He had conquered
his pride.

He dismounted, threw the bridle over a post, and, going into the garden,
knocked gently at the door. There was no response. He knocked again, and
listened intently. Now he heard a sound-like a smothered cry or groan.
He opened the door quickly and entered. It was dark. In another room
beyond was a light. From it came the same sound he had heard before, but
louder; also there was a shuffling footstep. Springing forward to the
half-open door, he pushed it wide, and met the terror-stricken eyes of
Constantine Jopp--the same look that he had seen at the theatre when his
hands were on Jopp's throat, but more ghastly.

Jopp was bound to a chair by a lasso. Both arms were fastened to the
chair-arm, and beneath them, on the floor, were bowls into which blood
dripped from his punctured wrists.

He had hardly taken it all in--the work of an instant--when he saw
crouched in a corner, madness in his eyes, his half-breed Vigon. He
grasped the situation in a flash. Vigon had gone mad, had lain in wait
in Jopp's house, and when the man he hated had seated himself in the
chair, had lassoed him, bound him, and was slowly bleeding him to death.

He had no time to think. Before he could act Vigon was upon him also,
frenzy in his eyes, a knife clutched in his hand. Reason had fled, and
he only saw in O'Ryan the frustrator of his revenge. He had watched the
drip, drip from his victim's wrists with a dreadful joy.

They were man and man, but O'Ryan found in this grisly contest a vaster
trial of strength than in the fight upon the stage a few hours ago. The
first lunge that Vigon made struck him on the tip of the shoulder, and
drew blood; but he caught the hand holding the knife in an iron grasp,
while the half-breed, with superhuman strength, tried in vain for
the long brown throat of the man for whom he had struck oil. As they
struggled and twisted, the eyes of the victim in the chair watched them
with agonised emotions. For him it was life or death. He could not cry
out--his mouth was gagged;