sight
of him steeled his shaken nerves and reinforced his feebler muscles, too.

He made a desperate fight where he could not hope for mercy, and kept
himself free of his powerful foe, whom he fought round and foiled, if he
could not hurt him. Jeff never knew of the blows Lynde got in upon him;
he had his own science, too, but he would not employ it. He wanted to
crash through Lynde's defence and lay hold of him and crush the life out
of him.

The contest could not have lasted long at the best; but before Lynde was
worn out he caught his heel in an old laurel root, and while he whirled
to recover his footing Jeff closed in upon him, caught him by the middle,
flung him down upon the moss, and was kneeling on his breast with both
hands at his throat.

He glared down into his enemy's face, and suddenly it looked pitifully
little and weak, like a girl's face, a child's.

Sometimes, afterward, it seemed to him that he forbore because at that
instant he saw Jombateeste appear at the edge of the clearing and come
running upon them. At other times he had the fancy that his action was
purely voluntary, and that, against the logic of his hate and habit of
his life, he had mercy upon his enemy. He did not pride himself upon it;
he rather humbled himself before the fact, which was accomplished through
his will, and not by it, and remained a mystery he did not try to solve.

He took his hands from Lynde's throat and his knees off his breast. "Get
up," he said; and when Lynde stood trembling on his feet he said to
Jombateeste: "Show this man the way to the Brooker Institute. I'll take
your gun home for you," and it was easy for him to detach the piece from
the bewildered Canuck's grasp. "Go! And if you stop, or even let him look
back, I'll shoot him. Quick!"

LI.

The day after Thanksgiving, when Westover was trying to feel well after
the turkey and cranberry and cider which a lady had given him at a
consciously old-fashioned Thanksgiving dinner, but not making it out
sufficiently to be able to work, he was astonished to receive a visit
from Whitwell.

"Well, sir," said the philosopher, without giving himself pause for the
exchange of reflections upon his presence in Boston, which might have
been agreeable to him on a less momentous occasion. "It's all up with
Lion's Head."

"What do you mean?" demanded Westover, with his mind upon the mountain,
which he electrically figured in an incredible destruction.

"She's b