friend.

Nobody spoke or moved for an instant, while Nate stood there, the man's
life in his hand, then slowly he lowered the uplifted weapon, caught
Hapgood by the collar, and dragged him to his feet.

"I won't soil my hands with the killing of you, Bill Hapgood!" he
muttered. "The cage is the place for mad dogs, and there you go. Now
march!"

"Now Nate, what you up to?" whined the other, pretty well sobered by all
this. "Le' go o' me, can't you? 'Tain't any of your funerals, is it?"

"It may be if I kill you," was the grim answer. "March!" and he gave the
wretched Hapgood a smart tap with his improvised billy that sent him on
several paces.

Then, to his utter discomfiture, out popped Lucy, red with indignation.

"Nate Tierney, what you doing with my father? Where you going to take
him to? Let him alone, I say. Let him alone!" Her voice rang out
shrilly, as she came forward, trembling with anger, and her
knight-errant looked up at her in a daze of wonderment. Could this be
Lucy?

"I'm a-goin' to take him where he won't have a chance at you again very
soon, child," he answered gently. "I'm a-goin' to put him in the
lock-up."

"The lock-up!" shrieked Lucy.

"The lock-up?" yelled the children.

"The lock-up!" roared the prisoner, galvanized into action by this
supreme horror. With one mighty effort he wrenched himself loose and
turned upon Nate, fighting like a tiger.

It was a short battle. Taken by surprise Tierney was for a minute
overpowered, but as he felt his only weapon, the stick, slipping from
his grasp he put forth all his strength and caught it back with a
desperate grip. Half fallen backward in the struggle he made a wild pass
in the air. He heard a crashing noise that seemed to rend his own soul
apart. Then the thud of a heavy body as it fell. And then, heaven and
earth seemed to stand still for one awful minute as, feeling no further
resistance, he raised himself and looked down upon his friend, William
Hapgood. Inert and still he lay, with his skull crushed in just above
the left temporal bone.

CHAPTER XIX.

IN THE CAGE.

Sometimes an eternity of suffering is condensed into a single minute,
yet that suffering is so like a dream, because of the paralyzed brain,
that one cannot fully realize it until afterwards. As Nate Tierney stood
over his victim, nerveless and faint, with eyeballs starting from their
sockets, he realized the lowest deep of hell, yet as if it had been
another