would never end.

It was a particularly ragged and miserable-looking arm, and why it could
so summarily check, halt and hold the great magnate of Pleasantville,
was the problem that now tried Bart's reasoning faculties.

Bart closed the door of the express office and stepped out to where he
could get a clearer view of the colonel and his environment.

Suddenly the strain was removed. The colonel threw up his arms with a
gasp. He started to turn around, clutched at his neck in a strangling
kind of a way, tottered, reeled, and plunged forward on his face against
a heap of cinders.

"This is serious," murmured Bart.

He rapidly covered the two hundred foot space between the express shed
and the freight car.

"Colonel--Colonel Harrington!" he called in some alarm, kneeling by the
prostrate body of his enemy.

Bart tried to pull him over on his back. As he partially succeeded, he
noticed that the colonel's face was pitted, and in one or two places
scratched and bleeding from contact with the cinder particles.

The bulky form was quivering and convulsed. The colonel had been dazed,
it seemed, but not rendered entirely unconscious, for now with a groan
he struggled to a sitting posture.