paralyzed his arm.

"The police!" he gasped.

Then, with a look of redoubled fury, he sent the knife to the hilt into
the squirming mass before him. The wounded monster sprang to its feet
and wildly threw its arms about, meanwhile emitting fearful sounds from
a silver tube through which it breathed. The surgeon aimed another
blow, but never gave it. In his blind fury he lost his caution, and was
caught in an iron grasp. The struggling threw the lamp some feet toward
the officers, and it fell to the floor, shattered to pieces.
Simultaneously with the crash the oil took fire, and the corridor was
filled with flame. The officers could not approach. Before them was the
spreading blaze, and secure behind it were two forms struggling in a
fearful embrace. They heard cries and gasps, and saw the gleaming of a
knife.

The wood in the house was old and dry. It took fire at once, and the
flames spread with great rapidity. The four officers turned and fled,
barely escaping with their lives. In an hour nothing remained of the
mysterious old house and its inmates but a blackened ruin.

An Original Revenge

On a certain day I received a letter from a private soldier, named
Gratmar, attached to the garrison of San Francisco. I had known him but
slightly, the acquaintance having come about through his interest in
some stories which I had published, and which he had a way of calling
"psychological studies." He was a dreamy, romantic, fine-grained lad,
proud as a tiger-lily and sensitive as a blue-bell. What mad caprice
led him to join the army I never knew; but I did know that there he was
wretchedly out of place, and I foresaw that his rude and repellant
environment would make of him in time a deserter, or a suicide, or a
murderer. The letter at first seemed a wild outpouring of despair, for
it informed me that before it should reach me its author would be dead
by his own hand. But when I had read farther I understood its spirit,
and realized how coolly formed a scheme it disclosed and how terrible
its purport was intended to be. The worst of the contents was the
information that a certain officer (whom he named) had driven him to
the deed, and that _he was committing suicide for the sole purpose of
gaining thereby the power to revenge himself upon his enemy_! I
learned afterward that the officer had received a similar letter.

This was so puzzling that I sat down to reflect upon the young man's
peculiarities. He had al