thing unspeakably terrible written
on Hamilton's silent face.

"Did the little wifie let him off for a night's play?" sneered Adderly.

Barely were the words out, when Hamilton's teeth clenched behind the
open lips, giving him an ugly, furious expression, strange to his face.
He took a quick stride towards the officer, raised his whip and brought
it down with the full strength of his shoulder in one cutting blow
across the baggy, purplish cheeks of the insolent speaker.

CHAPTER II

A STRONG MAN IS BOWED

The whole thing was so unexpected that for one moment not a man in the
room drew breath. Then the colonel sprang up with the bellow of an
enraged bull, overturning the table in his rush, and a dozen club
members were pulling him back from Eric.

"Eric Hamilton, are you mad?" I cried. "What do you mean?"

But Hamilton stood motionless as if he saw none of us. Except that his
breath was labored, he wore precisely the same strange, distracted air
he had on entering the club.

"Hold back!" I implored; for Adderly was striking right and left to get
free from the men. "Hold back! There's a mistake! Something's wrong!"

"Reptile!" roared the colonel. "Cowardly reptile, you shall pay for
this!"

"There's a mistake," I shouted, above the clamor of exclamations.

"Glad the mistake landed where it did, all the same," whispered Uncle
Jack MacKenzie in my ear, "but get him out of this. Drunk--or a
scandal," says my uncle, who always expressed himself in explosives
when excited. "Side room--here--lead him in--drunk--by Jove--drunk!"

"Never," I returned passionately. I knew both Hamilton and his wife too
well to tolerate either insinuation. But we led him like a dazed being
into a side office, where Mr. Jack MacKenzie promptly turned the key and
took up a posture with his back against the door.

"Now, Sir," he broke out sternly, "if it's neither drink, nor a
scandal----" There, he stopped; for Hamilton, utterly unconscious of us,
moved, rather than walked, automatically across the room. Throwing his
hat down, he bowed his head over both arms above the mantel-piece.

My uncle and I looked from the silent man to each other. Raising his
brows in question, Mr. Jack MacKenzie touched his forehead and whispered
across to me--"Mad?"

At that, though the word was spoken barely above a breath, Eric turned
slowly round and faced us with blood-shot, gleaming eyes. He made as
though he would speak, sank into the armcha