e ruffian suddenly
collided with his impassive figure. "I'm a sick man comin' in yer for
medicine. I've got somethin' wrong with my heart, and goin's on like
this yer kinder sets it to thumpin'."

"Blank you and your blank heart!" screamed the bully, turning in a fury
of amazement and contempt at this impotent interruption. "Who"--but his
voice stopped. Allen's powerful right arm had passed over his head and
shoulders like a steel hoop, and pinioned his elbows against his sides.
Held rigidly upright, he attempted to kick, but Allen's right leg here
advanced, and firmly held his lower limbs against the counter that shook
to his struggles and blasphemous outcries. Allen turned quietly to Kane,
and, with a gesture of his unemployed arm, said confidentially:

"Would ye mind passing me down that ar Romantic Spirits of Ammonyer ye
gave me last night?"

Kane caught the idea, and handed him the bottle.

"Thar," said Allen, taking out the stopper and holding the pungent
spirit against the bully's dilated nostrils and vociferous mouth, "thar,
smell that, and taste it, it will do ye good; it was powerful kammin' to
ME last night."

The ruffian gasped, coughed, choked, but his blaspheming voice died away
in a suffocating hiccough.

"Thar," continued Allen, as his now subdued captive relaxed his
struggling, "ye 'r' better, and so am I. It's quieter here now, and ye
ain't affectin' my heart so bad. A little fresh air will make us both
all right." He turned again to Kane in his former subdued confidential
manner.

"Would ye mind openin' that door?"

Kane flew to the door, unlocked it, and held it wide open. The bully
again began to struggle, but a second inhalation of the hartshorn
quelled him, and enabled his captor to drag him to the door. As they
emerged upon the sidewalk, the bully, with a final desperate struggle,
freed his arm and grasped his pistol at his hip-pocket, but at the same
moment Allen deliberately caught his hand, and with a powerful side
throw cast him on the pavement, retaining the weapon in his own hand.
"I've one of my own," he said to the prostrate man, "but I reckon I'll
keep this yer too, until you're better."

The crowd that had collected quickly, recognizing the notorious and
discomfited bully, were not of a class to offer him any sympathy, and he
slunk away followed by their jeers. Allen returned quietly to the
shop. Kane was profuse in his thanks, and yet oppressed with his simple
friend's fatu