Anthony's free hand to thwart.

"Here, stand back! I've got him!"

"I'll kill him!" chattered the other.

"Let me go," the stranger gasped. "I'll take you all in. I'm an
officer."

"It's a lie!" shouted Locke. "He's a thief."

"I tell you I'm--an officer; I arrest this--"

The words were cut off abruptly by a loud exclamation from Higgins
and a crash of glass. Kirk Anthony's face was drenched, his eyes
were filled with a stinging liquid; he felt his prisoner sink
limply back into his arms and beheld Higgins struggling in the
grasp of big Marty Ringold, the foil-covered neck of a wine bottle
in his fingers.

The foolish fellow had been hovering uncertainly round the edges
of the crowd, longing to help his friends and crazily anxious to
win glory by some deed of valor. At the first opening he had
darted wildly into the fray, not realizing that the enemy was
already helpless in the hands of his captors.

"I've got him!" he cried, joyously. "He's out!'

"Higgins!" Anthony exclaimed, sharply. "What the devil--" Then the
dead weight in his arms, the lolling head and sagging jaw of the