ad just a while back.
Now, look here, woman----"

He had come fully into the room, and now he saw in her lap the weapon.
Half unconsciously she raised it.

"Look out!" he called. "It may be loaded. Drop it!"

"Come a step further, and I'll shoot!" said Mary Warren. And then,
although he did not know that she was sightless, he saw on her face
that look which might well warn him. Any ruffian knows that a woman is
more apt to shoot than is a man.

This ruffian paused now half way inside the door and looked about him.
A grin spread across his wide, high-cheeked face. He reached down
silently to the stout spruce stick, charred at one end, that stood
between him and the stove. Grasping it he advanced on tiptoe, silent
as a cat, toward the woman. He was convinced that her sight was poor,
almost convinced that she did not see at all, because she made no move
when he stopped, the stick drawn back. With a swift sweep he struck
the barrel of the revolver a blow so forceful that it was cast quite
across the room. He sprang upon it at once.

Mary Warren cried out, drew back as far as she could. The impact of
the blow had crushed a finger of the hand that held the weapon. She
wrung her hands, held up the bloody finger. "Who are you--what do you
want?" she moaned.

"That's what you get when you run against a real one," sneered the
voice of the man, who now stood fully within the little room. "Just
keep quiet now."

"What do you mean? What are you going to do?" She felt about again
for some weapon, anything, but could find nothing.

"That's a purty question to ask, ain't it now?" sneered her assailant.
She could catch the reek of raw spirits around him as he stood near by.
She shuddered.

"Sim!" she called out aloud at last. "Sim! Sim!"

The name caused a vast mirth in her captor. "Sim! Sim!" he mocked
her. "Lot o' help Sim'd be if he was here, wouldn't he? As though I
cared for that dirty loafer. He's going to git all that's comin' to
_him_. Aw, Sim! He'll leave us Soviet sabcats alone. We're thinkers.
We're free men. We run our own government, and we run our own selves,
too."

The liquor had made the man loquacious. He must boast. She tried to
guess what he might mean.

But something in the muddled brain of the man retained recollection of
an earlier purpose. "Stay inside, you!" he said. "I got work to do.
If you go outside I'll kill you. Do you hear me?"

She heard his feet passing, h