lamped one thick arm
about his neck in the strangle-hold. Holding him helpless, bent
backwards across his broad chest, Fyfe slowly and systematically choked
him; he shut off his breath until Monohan's tongue protruded, and his
eyes bulged glassily, and horrible, gurgling noises issued from his
gaping mouth.

"Jack, Jack!" Stella found voice to shriek. "You're killing him."

Fyfe lifted his eyes to hers. The horror he saw there may have stirred
him. Or he may have considered his object accomplished. Stella could not
tell. But he flung Monohan from him with a force that sent him reeling a
dozen feet, to collapse on the moss. It took him a full minute to regain
his breath, to rise to unsteady feet, to find his voice.

"You can't win all the time," he gasped. "By God, I'll show you that you
can't."

With that he turned and went back the way he had come. Fyfe stood
silent, hands resting on his hips, watching until Monohan pushed out a
slim speed launch from under cover of overhanging alders and set off
down the lake.

"Well," he remarked then, in a curiously detached, impersonal tone.
"The lightning will begin to play by and by, I suppose."

"What do you mean?" Stella asked breathlessly.

He did not answer. His eyes turned to her slowly. She saw now that his
face was white and rigid, that the line of his lips drew harder together
as he looked at her; but she was not prepared for the storm that broke.
She did not comprehend the tempest that raged within him until he had
her by the shoulders, his fingers crushing into her soft flesh like the
jaws of a trap, shaking her as a terrier might shake a rat, till the
heavy coils of hair cascaded over her shoulders, and for a second fear
tugged at her heart. For she thought he meant to kill her.

When he did desist, he released her with a thrust of his arms that sent
her staggering against a tree, shaken to the roots of her being, though
not with fear. Anger had displaced that. A hot protest against his brute
strength, against his passionate outbreak, stirred her. Appearances were
against her, she knew. Even so, she revolted against his cave-man
roughness. She was amazed to find herself longing for the power to
strike him.

She faced him trembling, leaning against the tree trunk, staring at him
in impotent rage. And the fire died out of his eyes as she looked. He
drew a deep breath or two and turned away to pick up his rifle. When he
faced about with that in his hand, the ol