He
heard an angry shout, and then Ben Soloman rode up, and, with a
torrent of execrations at the carelessness of the watchers, leapt
from his horse and sprang to seize the fugitive, whom he regarded
as incapable of offering the slightest resistance.

Charlie straightened himself up, as if with an effort, and raised
his cudgel.

"I will not be taken alive," he said.

Ben Soloman drew his long knife from his girdle. "Drop that stick,"
he said, "or it will be worse for you."

"It cannot be worse than being tortured to death, as you said."

The Jew, with an angry snarl, sprang forward so suddenly and
unexpectedly that he was within the swing of Charlie's cudgel
before the latter could strike. He dropped the weapon at once, and
caught the wrist of the uplifted hand that held the knife.

The Jew gave a cry of astonishment and rage, as they clasped each
other, and he found that, instead of an unresisting victim, he was
in a powerful grasp. For a moment there was a desperate struggle.

The Jew would, at ordinary times, have been no match for Charlie,
but the latter was far from having regained his normal strength.
His fury at the treatment he had received at the man's hands,
however, enabled him, for the moment, to exert himself to the
utmost, and, after swaying backwards and forwards in desperate
strife for a minute, they went to the ground with a crash, Ben
Soloman being undermost.

The Jew's grasp instantly relaxed, and Charlie, springing to his
feet and seizing his cudgel, stood over his fallen antagonist. The
latter, however, did not move. His eyes were open in a fixed stare.
Charlie looked at him in surprise for a moment, thinking he was
stunned, then he saw that his right arm was twisted under him in
the fall, and at once understanding what had happened, turned him
half over. He had fallen on the knife, which had penetrated to the
haft, killing him instantly.

"I didn't mean to kill you," Charlie said aloud, "much as you
deserve it, and surely as you would have killed me, if I had
refused to act as a traitor. I would have broken your head for you,
but that was all. However, it is as well as it is. It adds to my
chance of getting away, and I have no doubt there will be many who
will rejoice when you are found to be missing.

"Now," he went on, "as your agents emptied my pockets, it is no
robbery to empty yours. Money will be useful, and so will your
horse."

He stooped over the dead man, and took the purse