motionless before him, was easily his victim.

He leaped at him, his left arm swinging like a scythe, and, with the
impact of a club, the blow caught the burglar in the throat.

The pistol went off impotently; the burglar with a choking cough sank
in a heap on the floor.

The young man tramped over him and upon him, and beat the second
burglar with savage, whirlwind blows. The second burglar, shrieking
with pain, turned to fly, and a fist, that fell upon him where his bump
of honesty should have been, drove his head against the lintel of the
door.

At the same instant from the belfry on the roof there rang out on the
night the sudden tumult of a bell; a bell that told as plainly as
though it clamored with a human tongue, that the hand that rang it was
driven with fear; fear of fire, fear of thieves, fear of a mad-man with
a knife in his hand running amuck; perhaps at that moment creeping up
the belfry stairs.

From all over the house there was the rush of feet and men's voices,
and from the garden the light of dancing lanterns. And while the smoke
of the revolver still hung motionless, the open door was crowded with
half-clad figures. At their head were two young men. One who had
drawn over his night clothes a serge suit, and who, in even that garb,
carried an air of authority; and one, tall, stooping, weak of face and
light-haired, with eyes that blinked and trembled behind great
spectacles and who, for comfort, hugged about him a gorgeous kimono.
For an instant the newcomers stared stupidly through the smoke at the
bodies on the floor breathing stertorously, at the young man with the
lust of battle still in his face, at the girl shrinking against the
wall. It was the young man in the serge suit who was the first to move.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"These are burglars," said the owner of the car. "We happened to be
passing in my automobile, and----"

The young man was no longer listening. With an alert, professional
manner he had stooped over the big burglar. With his thumb he pushed
back the man's eyelids, and ran his fingers over his throat and chin.
He felt carefully of the point of the chin, and glanced up.

"You've broken the bone," he said.

"I just swung on him," said the young man. He turned his eyes, and
suggested the presence of the girl.

At the same moment the man in the kimono cried nervously: "Ladies
present, ladies present. Go put your clothes on, everybody; put your
clothes o