ger swung
suddenly out upon them, moving with a kind of massive force that
carried purpose in every line. Men drew themselves together as he
passed them with the instinctive impulse to leave his progress
unimpeded; for this man would have forced his way past every
obstacle at that moment. He went straight for his objective
without a glance to right or left.

Sylvia started back at his coming. That which her enemy could not
do was accomplished by her husband by neither word nor look. The
regal poise went out of her bearing. She shrank against Kelly as
if seeking refuge. For she had seen Burke's eyes, as she had seen
them the night before; and they were glittering with the lust for
blood. They were the eyes of a murderer.

Straight to Kieff he came, and Kieff waited for him, quite
motionless, with thin lips drawn back, showing a snarling gleam of
teeth. But just as Burke reached him he moved. His right arm shot
forth with a serpentine ferocity, and in a flash the muzzle of a
revolver gleamed between them.

"Hands up, if you please, Mr. Ranger!" he said smoothly. "We shall
talk better that way."

But for once in his life he had made a miscalculation, and the next
instant he realized it. He had reckoned without the blunderer
Kelly. For a fierce oath broke from the Irishman at sight of the
weapon, and in the same second he beat it down with the stock of
his riding-whip with a force that struck it out of Kieff's grasp.
It spun along the floor to Sylvia's feet, and she stooped and
snatched it up.

Burke did not so much as glance round. He had Kieff by the collar
of his coat, and the fate of the revolver was obviously a matter of
no importance to him. "Give me that horse-whip of yours, Donovan!"
he said,

Kelly complied with the childlike obedience he invariably yielded
to Burke. Then he fell back to Sylvia, and very gently took the
revolver out of her clenched hand.

She looked at him, her eyes wide, terror-stricken. "He will kill
him!" she said, in a voiceless whisper.

"Not a bit of it," said Kelly, and put his arm around her. "These
poisonous vermin don't die so easy. Pity they don't."

And then began the most terrible scene that Sylvia had ever looked
upon. No one intervened between Burke and his victim. There was
even a look of brutal satisfaction upon some of the faces around.
Piet Vreiboom openly gloated, as if he were gazing upon a spectacle
of rare delight.

And Burke thrashed Kieff