drawn brow, the eye like agate, the jaw as iron as the hand! And ever
more and a little more that fearful grip came grinding. The onyx eyes
glared in terror; the tortured forehead, white as paper, became spangled
with drops of sweat.

There arose a smothered feline screech as from a tiger whose back is
broken in a deadfall. Richard gave his wrist the shadow of a twist, and
Storri fell on one knee. Then, as though it were some foul thing,
Richard tossed aside Storri's hand, from the nails of which blood came
oozing in black drops as large as grapes.

"What was it?" gasped Dorothy, who had stood throughout the duel like
one planet-struck; "what was it you did?"

"Storri on his knee?" asked Richard with a kind of vicious sweetness.
There was something arctic, something remorselessly glacial, in the man.
It caught and held Dorothy, entrancing while it froze. "Storri on his
knee?" repeated Richard, looking where his adversary was staining a
handkerchief with Tartar blood. "It was nothing. It is a way in which
Russians honor me--that is, Russians whom I do not like!"




CHAPTER II

HOW A PRESIDENT IS BRED


Mr. Patrick Henry Hanway, a Senator of the United States, had the