ked bodily out of Big Jan's hands and thrust into the
waiting woman's. The astonished Boss found himself confronting a pale
and formidable face with a pair of eyes like glinting sword-blades.

Kerry had followed his master, and was now close to his side. For the
moment Flint had forgotten him. But Big Jan's evil eyes caught sight
of him. He knew the Butterfly Man's dog very well. He snickered. A
huge foot shot out, there was a howl of anguish and astonishment, and
Kerry went flying through the air as if shot from a catapult.

"So!" Jan grunted like a satisfied hog, "I feex _you_ like that in one
meenute, me."

The red jumped from John Flint's cheeks to his eyes, and stayed there.
Why, this hulking brute had hurt _Kerry!_ His breath exhaled in a
whistling sigh. He seemed to coil himself together; with a tiger-leap
he launched himself at the great hulk before him. It went down. It had
to.

I know every detail of that historic fight. Is it not written large in
the Book of the Deeds of Appleboro, and have I not heard it by word of
mouth from many a raving eye-witness? Does not Dr. Walter Westmoreland
lick his lips over it unto this day?

A long groaning sigh went up from the onlookers. Meester Fleent was a
great and a good man; but he was a crippled man. Death was very close
to him.

Big Jan was not too drunk to fight savagely, but he was in a most
horrible rage, and this weakened him. He meant to kill this impudent
fellow who had taken Michael away from him before he had half-finished
with him. But first he would break every bone in the crippled man's
body, take him in his hands and break his back over one knee as one
does a slat. A man with one leg to balk him, Big Jan? That called for
a killing. Jan had no faintest idea he might not be able to make good
this pleasant intention.

It was a stupendous fight, a Homeric fight, a fight against odds,
which has become a town tradition. If Jan was formidable, a veritable
bison, his opponent was no cringing workman scared out of his wits and
too timid to defend himself. John Flint knew his own weakness, knew
what he could expect at Jan's hands, and it made him cool, collected,
wary, and deadly. He was no more the mild-mannered, soft-spoken
Butterfly Man, but another and a more primal creature, fighting for
his life. Big Jan, indeed, fancied he had nobody but the Butterfly Man
to deal with; as a matter of fact he was tackling Slippy McGee.

Skilled, watchful, dangerous, t