hed and
swayed, that strove and panted, grimly speechless. Then, closing in,
they waited an opportunity to smite down M'Ginnis's foe from behind. But
the Spider was watching, and, before either of them could kick or
strike, his fists thudded home--twice--hard blows aimed with scientific
precision; after which, having dragged the fallen away from those
fierce-trampling feet, he stood, quivering and tense, to watch that
desperate encounter.

Once Ravenslee staggered back from a vicious flush-hit, and once
M'Ginnis spun around to fall upon hands and knees; then they clenched,
and coming to the ground together, fought there, rolling to and fro and
hideously twisted together. But slowly Ravenslee's clean living began
to tell, and M'Ginnis, wriggling beneath a merciless grip, uttered
inarticulate cries and groaned aloud. And now the deadly neckerchief
was about his gasping throat and in his ears his conqueror's fierce
laugh--lost all at once in a roar of voices, a rush of trampling feet.

Wrenched at by fierce hands, smitten by unseen fists, Ravenslee was
beaten down--was dimly aware of the Spider's long legs bestriding him,
and staggering up through a tempest of blows, hurled himself among his
crowding assailants, felled one with his right, stopped another with his
left, and, as the press broke to the mad fury of his onslaught, felt his
hand wrenched from a man's windpipe and heard a frantic voice that
panted:

"Leg it, bo, leg it. Hully Chee! ain't ye had enough?" So, mechanically,
he set off at a run, with his arm still gripped by the Spider. "Leg it,
bo--leg it good, or here's where we snuff it sure! This way--round th'
corner; only keep goin', bo, keep goin'."

Very fleetly they ran with their pursuers close on their heels, across
open lots, over fences, along tortuous alleys, until the rush and patter
of the many feet died away, and the Spider, pulling up at the corner of
a dismal, narrow street hard by the river, stood awhile to listen.

"Jiminy Christmas! but you're some hot stuff at the swattin'
business--you're a glutton, you are, bo. I been in one or two scraps
meself, but I never seen a guy so hungry for--"

"Where are we?"

"Thirteenth an' Twentieth."

"Are we safe?"

"F' th' time, I reckon. But all Hell's Kitchen'll be out after us
t'night, sure. So I guess it's us for th' immediate hike--"

"Us? Will they be after you, too?"

"Well," said the Spider, smiling down grimly at his damaged, knuckles,