ainly across the blurr of faces, glowered triumphantly
as again they found the men he sought.

He drew up with a little jerk, not ten steps from the two men who as
usual were standing close together. Such had been the strange
impressiveness of his approach that now he was greeted by a deep
silence. The only sound was his own hard breathing, then his words
when he burst out violently.

As though his tongue were a poisoned whip he lashed them with it.
Burning denunciation exploding within his heated brain was flung off in
words to bite like spraying vitriol. His voice rose higher, shriller,
grown more and more discordant. He cursed them until the blood ran
into Lemarc's cheeks and seeped out of Sefton's. And when at last
words failed and he choked a moment he flung himself upon them,
bellowing inarticulate, half-smothered wrath.

Men drew back from before him. It was not their fight and they knew
how and when to shrug their shoulders and watch. Lemarc, running his
hand under his coat for his knife, was struck down before the hand
could come in sight again. Drennen's searching fist had found the
man's forehead and the sound of the blow was like a hammer beating
against rock. Either Sefton had no arms upon him or had not the time
to draw. He could only oppose his physical strength against the
physical strength of a man who was an Antaeus from the madness and
blood lust upon him. Sefton's white face went whiter, chalky and sick
as Drennen's long arms encircled his body. Lemarc was rising slowly,
his knife at last in his hand when Sefton's body, hurled far out,
struck the ground.

Drennen was not fighting as a man fights. Rather were his actions
those of some enraged, cautionless beast. Rushing at Lemarc he beat
fiercely at a man who chanced to stand in his way, and the man went
down. Lemarc was on his feet now, his knife lifted. And yet Drennen,
bare handed, was rushing on at him. Sefton was up too, and there was a
revolver in his hand. But Drennen, snarling, his fury blind and raging
higher, took no heed of the weapon's menace. The thing in Lemarc's
eyes, in Sefton's, was the thing a man must know when he sees it; and
yet Drennen came on.

But another man saw and understood before it was too late. Marshall
Sothern who had followed Drennen with long strides, was now close to
his side. The old man's stalwart form moved swiftly, coming between
Drennen and Sefton. With a quickness which men did not l