er 'chuckers out.'"

His further relation of Madame le Blanc's entourage apparently gave the
miner no concern. He looked at Kane, nodded, and repeated slowly
and appreciatively: "Yes, keeps a gamblin' and faro bank and a
prize-fighter--I reckon that might be about her gait and style too. And
you say she lives"--

He stopped, for at this moment a man entered the shop quickly, shut the
door behind him, and turned the key in the lock. It was done so quickly
that Kane instinctively felt that the man had been loitering in the
vicinity and had approached from the side street. A single glance at the
intruder's face and figure showed him that it was the bully of whom
he had just spoken. He had seen that square, brutal face once before,
confronting the police in a riot, and had not forgotten it. But today,
with the flush of liquor on it, it had an impatient awkwardness and
confused embarrassment that he could not account for. He did not
comprehend that the genuine bully is seldom deliberate of attack, and
is obliged--in common with many of the combative lower animals--to lash
himself into a previous fury of provocation. This probably saved him, as
perhaps some instinctive feeling that he was in no immediate danger kept
him cool. He remained standing quietly behind the counter. Allen glanced
around carelessly, looking at the shelves.

The silence of the two men apparently increased the ruffian's rage and
embarrassment. Suddenly he leaped into the air with a whoop and
clumsily executed a negro double shuffle on the floor, which jarred the
glasses--yet was otherwise so singularly ineffective and void of purpose
that he stopped in the midst of it and had to content himself with
glaring at Kane.

"Well," said Kane quietly, "what does all this mean? What do you want
here?"

"What does it mean?" repeated the bully, finding his voice in a high
falsetto, designed to imitate Kane's. "It means I'm going to play merry
h-ll with this shop! It means I'm goin' to clean it out and the blank
hair-cuttin' blank that keeps it. What do I want here? Well--what I want
I intend to help myself to, and all h-ll can't stop me! And" (working
himself to the striking point) "who the blank are you to ask me?" He
sprang towards the counter, but at the same moment Allen seemed to
slip almost imperceptibly and noiselessly between them, and Kane found
himself confronted only by the miner's broad back.

"Hol' yer hosses, stranger," said Allen slowly, as th