ear broke bounds, leaped into action. Beaudry saw red. With both
hands he caught Charlton's foot, twisted it savagely, and flung the man
head over heels out of the chair. He snatched up the bootblack's stool
by one leg and brought it crashing down on the head of Meldrum. The
ex-convict went down as if he had been pole-axed.

There was no time to draw guns, no time to prepare a defense. His
brain on fire from the liquor he had drunk and his overpowering terror,
Beaudry was a berserk gone mad with the lust of battle. He ran amuck
like a maniac, using the stool as a weapon to hammer down the heads of
his foes. It crashed first upon one, now on another.

Charlton rushed him and was struck down beside Meldrum. Hart, flung
back into the cigar-case, smashed the glass into a thousand splinters.
Young Rutherford was sent spinning into the street.

His assailants gave way before Beaudry, at first slowly, then in a
panic of haste to escape. He drove them to the sidewalk, flailing away
at those within reach. Chet Fox hurdled in his flight a burro loaded
with wood.

Then, suddenly as it had swept over Roy, the brain-storm passed. The
mists cleared from his eyes. He looked down at the leg of the stool in
his hand, which was all that remained of it. He looked up--and saw
Beulah Rutherford in the street astride a horse.

She spoke to her brother, who had drawn a revolver from his pocket.
"You don't need that now, Ned. He's through."

Her contemptuous voice stung Roy. "Why didn't they leave me alone,
then?" he said sullenly in justification.

The girl did not answer him. She slipped from the horse and ran into
the arcade with the light grace that came of perfect health and the
freedom of the hills. The eyes of the young man followed this slim,
long-limbed Diana as she knelt beside Charlton and lifted his bloody
head into her arms. He noticed that her eyes burned and that her
virginal bosom rose and fell in agitation.

None the less she gave first aid with a business-like economy of
motion. "Bring water, Ned,--and a doctor," she snapped crisply, her
handkerchief pressed against the wound.

To see what havoc he had wrought amazed Roy. The arcade looked as if a
cyclone had swept through it. The cigar-stand was shattered beyond
repair, its broken glass strewn everywhere. The chair of the bootblack
had been splintered into kindling wood. Among the debris sat Meldrum
groaning, both hands pressing a head that f