it awoke like a tempest in the tropics. His face became transformed,
alive with a passion uncanny in its recklessness and purpose. It was a
brain-storm indeed, but it had behind it a normal power, a moral force
which was not to be resisted.

"None of your sickly melodrama here. Take out of your pocket the pistol
you carry and give it to me," Crozier growled. "You are not to be
trusted. The habit of thinking you would shoot somebody some time--
somebody you had injured--might become too much for you to-day, and then
I should have to kill you, and for your wife's sake I don't want to do
that. I always feel sorry for a woman with a husband like you. You
could never shoot me. You couldn't be quick enough, but you might try.
Then I should end you, and there'd be another trial; but the lawyer who
defended me would not have to cross-examine any witness about your
character. It is too well-known, Burlingame. Out with it--the pistol!"
he added, standing menacingly over the other.

In a kind of stupor, under the storm that was breaking above him,
Burlingame slowly drew out of a capacious waistcoat pocket a tiny but
powerful pistol of the most modern make.

"Put it in my hand," insisted Crozier, his eyes on the other's.

The flabby hand laid the weapon in Crozier's lean and strenuous fingers.
Crozier calmly withdrew the cartridges and then tossed the weapon back on
the table.

"Now we have equality of opportunity," he remarked quietly. "If you
think you would like to repeat any slander that's slid off your foul
tongue, do it now; and in a moment or two Mrs. Tynan can turn the hose on