been addressing his deadliest enemy.

Again his voice rang out, "What brings you here? Do you come to plead
again for that dastard Reinhart after the warning I gave you?"

I clenched both hands until I felt the nails cut the flesh of my palms. I
loved Bob Brownley. I would have done anything to make him happy, would
willingly have sacrificed my own life to protect his from himself or
others, but this madman, this wild brute, was no more Bob Brownley as I
had known him than the howling northeast gale of December is the gentle,
welcome zephyr of August; and I felt a resentment at his brutal speech
that I could hardly suppress. With a mighty effort I crushed it back,
trying to think of nothing but his awful misery and the Bob of our college
days.

I said in a firm voice, "Bob, is this the way to talk to me in your own
office?" At any time before, my words and tone would have touched his
all-generous Southern chivalry, but now he said harshly--"To hell with
sentiment. What----" He did not take his eyes from mine, but they told me
that he was listening to a voice in the receiver. Only for a second; then
he let loose a wild laugh, which must have penetrated to the outer office.

"Eighty and coming like a spring freshet," he said into the mouthpiece,
"and the boys want to know if I won't let up now that Reinhart is down?
Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That's my
answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they
were all killed, I'd rend his bastard trust to help him dull his sorrow.
Give the word at every pole that I will have Reinhart where he will curse
his luck that he was not in the automobile with the rest of his tribe----

"To hell with sentiment!" He was speaking to me again. "What do you want?
If you are here to beg for Reinhart and his pack of yellow curs, you've
got your answer. I wouldn't let up on that fiendish hyena, not if his wife
and daughter and all the dead wives and daughters of every 'System' man
came back in their grave clothes and begged. I wouldn't let up a share." I
gasped in horror.

"When did those robbers of men and despoilers of women and children ever
let up because of death? When were they ever known to wait even till the
corpse stiffened to pluck out the hearts of the victims? It is my turn
now, and if I let up a hair may I, yes, and Beulah, too, be damned,
eternally damned."

I could not stand it. If I stayed, I, too, should become mad. I