body that can but me. Young Neil don't know. The luck's with you, sir,
just the same as it always was."

"I've had enough of this. Get home, Brady," cried the Colonel, in a
voice that was suddenly wavering and high, like an old man's, but his
guest only smiled and nodded wisely, beginning to sway as he stood, but
still gripping the clumsy revolver tight.

"Just the same as it was when old Neil Donovan died."

"Get home," shrilled the Colonel again, but his guest pursued the tenor
of his thoughts untroubled, still with the look of an amiably disposed
fellow-conspirator on his weak face, a maddening look, even if his words
conveyed no sting of their own.

"Neil Donovan," he crooned, "my father's own half-brother, and a good
uncle to me, and a gentleman, too. He sold rum over a counter, but he
was a gentleman, for he didn't talk too much. A gentleman don't tell."

But the catalogue of his uncle's perfections, whether in place here or
not, was to proceed no further. The audience pressed closer, as eager
to look on at a fight as it was to keep out of one. There was a new and
surprising development in this one. The two men had closed with each
other, and it was not the half-crazed boy who had made the attack, but
the Colonel himself.

It was a sudden and awkward attack, and there was something stranger
about it still. The Colonel was angry. He had tried to knock the weapon
out of the boy's hand, failed, and tried instinctively, still, to get
possession of it, but he was not making an adequate and necessary
attempt to disarm him, he was no longer adequate or calm. He was angry,
suddenly angry with the poor specimen of humanity that was making its
futile attempt at protest and rebellion, as if it were an equal and an
enemy. His face was distorted and his eyes were dull and unseeing. His
breath came in panting gasps, and he made inarticulate little sounds in
his throat. He struck furious and badly directed blows.

It was a curious thing to see, in the heart of the great man's admiring
circle, at the climax of his most successful party of the year. It did
not last long. The two struggling figures broke away from each other,
and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his
hand. He was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by
it, pale and dangerous, with a fanatic light in his eyes. Some one who
had an eye for danger signals, if the Colonel had not, had made his
unobtrusive way forwa