ce. I am trying to do so again. Let us talk like
men. She has neither father, mother, sister, or brother. Are you seeking
to give her an equivalent for these?"

The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then
looked around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.

"I know that she is a strange, willful girl," continued the master, "but
she is better than she was. I believe that I have some influence over
her still. I beg and hope, therefore, that you will take no further
steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman, leave her to me. I
am willing--" But here something rose again in the master's throat, and
the sentence remained unfinished.

The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised his
head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:

"Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't fight here, young man!"

The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the glance
than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all these. The
best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a blow. The master
felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy finding expression in
the one act, he struck the brute full in his grinning face. The blow
sent the glazed hat one way and the cue another, and tore the glove
and skin from the master's hand from knuckle to joint. It opened up
the corners of the fellow's mouth, and spoilt the peculiar shape of his
beard for some time to come.

There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of many
feet. Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp quick reports
followed each other in rapid succession. Then they closed again about
his opponent, and the master was standing alone. He remembered picking
bits of burning wadding from his coat sleeve with his left hand. Someone
was holding his other hand. Looking at it, he saw it was still bleeding
from the blow, but his fingers were clenched around the handle of a
glittering knife. He could not remember when or how he got it.

The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher. He hurried the master
to the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him as well
as he could with his parched throat about "Mliss." "It's all right,
my boy," said Mr. Morpher. "She's home!" And they passed out into the
street together. As they walked along Mr. Morpher said that Mliss had
come running into the house a few moments before, and had dragged him
out, say