a stabbing pain entered his side and stayed apparently tangled
in splintered bone. He paused for a moment, and all three fell upon him,
beating, clubbing, kicking. He fought on, now rapidly losing power. The
woman threw herself on his back, forced him to his knees. "Won't none of
you do for him?" she complained hysterically. She pressed his head into
her breast, and Mr. Ottinger hit him below and just back of his ear.
Gordon slipped out full length on the floor.

He was waveringly conscious, but he had lost all interest, all sense of
personal connection, with the proceedings. He dully watched Ottinger draw
back, tenderly fingering his damaged features; he saw Em breathing
stormily, empurpled. Jake, with the crimson flames in his long, pallid
mask, the white saliva flecking his jaw, hung over him with a glassy,
intent stare.

"Get the stuff," the practical Ottinger urged; "it's the stuff we're
after. Don't go bug again."

"Jake don't hear you," Em told him, "he's off. I'm glad the fella's going
to be fixed, he jolted me something fierce."

Jake swung the little, flexuous club softly against his palm, and Gordon
suddenly realized that the cripple intended to kill him.--That was the
lust which transfigured the gambler's countenance, which lit the fires in
the deathly cheeks, set the long fingers shaking. Gordon considered the
idea, and, obscurely, it troubled him, moved him a space from his apathy.
Instinctively, in response to a sudden movement of the figure above him,
he drew his arm up in front of his head; and an intolerable pain shot up
through his shoulder and flared, blindingly, in his eyes. It pierced his
indifference, set in motion his reason, his memory; he realized the
necessity, the danger, of his predicament ... the money!--he must guard
it, take it back with him. Above, in a heated, orange mist, the woman's
face loomed blank and inhuman; farther back Mr. Ottinger's features were
indistinctly visible.

He must rise....

His groping hand caught hold of the rung of the chair, and, with herculean
labor, he turned and raised himself a fraction from the floor. Jake
directed a hasty blow at his head that missed him altogether. His other
hand caught the chair, and he dragged himself dizzily into a kneeling
posture. A sudden change swept over the three above him.

"Nail him where he is!" Em cried excitedly; "he's getting up on you."
Gordon's hands moved uncertainly upward on the chair; his knees rose from
the