He had been a professed Christian, not because of Olivet, but because of
Sinai. It was the stormy authority of the sword of the Lord of Gideon of
the Old Testament which had drawn him into the fold of religion. It was
some strain of heredity, his upbringing, the life into which he was born,
pious, pedantic and preposterously prayerful, which had made him a
professional Christian, as he was a professional farmer, rancher and
money-maker. For such a man there never could be peace.

In his own world of wanton inhumanity, oblivious of all except his
torturing thoughts, he did not know that, as he neared the Cross Trails
on his way homewards, something shadowy, stooping, sprang up from the
roadside and slip-slopped after his wagon--slip-slopped--slip-slopped--
catching the thud of the horses' hoofs, and making its footsteps
coincide.

All at once the shadowy figure swung itself up softly and remained for an
instant, half-kneeling, in the body of the wagon. Then suddenly,
noiselessly, it rose up, leaned over the absorbed Joel Mazarine, and with
long, hooked, steely fingers caught the throat of the Master of Tralee
under the grayish beard. They clenched there with a power like that of
three men; for this was the kind of grip which, far away in the country
of the Yang-tse-kiang, Li Choo had learned in the days when he had made
youth a thing to be remembered.

No convulsive effort on the part of the victim could loosen that terrible
grip; but the horses, responding to the first jerk of the reins following
the attack, stood still, while a human soul was being wrenched out of the
world behind them.