hat old training saved him. Every time
Jan came to his feet, roaring, thrashing his arms like flails, making
head-long, bull-like rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him
sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went
staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his
advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a
battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and
even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath.
Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And
presently using every wrestler's trick that he knew, and bringing to
bear every ounce of his saved and superb strength, in a most orderly,
businesslike, cold-blooded manner he proceeded to pound Big Jan into
pulp. The devil that had been chained these seven years was a-loose at
last, rampant, fully aroused, and not easily satisfied. Besides, had
not Jan most brutally and wantonly tried to kill Kerry!

If it was a well deserved it was none the less a most drastic
punishment, and when it was over Big Jan lay still. He would lie prone
for many a day, and he would carry marks of it to his grave.

When the tousled victor, with a reeling head, an eye fast closing, and
a puffed and swollen lip, staggered upright and stood swaying on his
feet, he found himself surrounded by a great quiet ring of men and
women who regarded him with eyes of wonder and amaze. He was
superhuman; he had accomplished the impossible; paid the dreaded Boss
in his own coin, yea, given him full measure to the running over
thereof! No man of all the men Jan had beaten in his time had received
such as Jan himself had gotten at this man's hands to-day. The reign
of the Boss was over: and the conqueror was a crippled man! A great
sighing breath of sheer worshipful admiration went up; they were too
profoundly moved to cheer him; they could only stand and stare. When
they wished, reverently, to help him, he waved them aside.

"Where's my dog?" he demanded thickly through his swollen lips.
"Where's Kerry? If he's dead--" he cast upon fallen Jan a menacing
glare.

"Your dog's in bed with the baby, and Ma's give him milk with brandy
in it, and he drank it and growled at her, and the boys is holding
him down now to keep him from coming out to you, and he ain't much
hurt nohow," squealed one of Michael's big-eyed children.

John Flint, stretching his arms above his head, drew in a great
gu