Magnificent! We can hold this room for a year against those drunken sheep...."

The din outside grew deafening. One man, braving Henry's threat, had made a bolt across the star-lit s.p.a.ce to the house, and no shot had rung out from the upstairs window. Others had instantly followed, and the little front porch now echoed under many feet. Yet, boisterous as they were, the mobbers seemed to hesitate at taking the front door at a rush, as though fearful of what reception might await them in the dark and silent hall beyond.

But now a stone crashed through a front window downstairs, and a man's voice rang out suddenly so close that it seemed to be inside the parlor:

"One minute to come out fair in the open, Stanhope, or we'll set a light to this house, so help us G.o.d!"

Mr. Stanhope gave a low cry. "Call to them, Henry!" he ordered, wildly.

"Quick! Tell them I'm coming out this minute."

Henry, his back against the door, did not stir.

"_Hare_ you goin' out, sir?"

"No," said Varney, "he isn't. But I am."

Peter came further into the pretty room, impatient eyes fixed on Varney.

"What fool's talk is this?" he demanded roughly. "n.o.body is going out.

We four--"

Another loud crash of broken gla.s.s drowned him out. In Varney's eye the look of anxiety had deepened. He understood everything at a glance.

Adroit proddings of a few poor Hackleys, some cheap liquor, the word pa.s.sed to Maginnis as from a friend--this was how the boss of Hunston had plotted to set his heel upon Reform and stamp it out forever. He came three steps back into the room, sternly.

"You were a monumental fool to let them send you here, Peter--"

But the swelling tumult without made parley out of the question.

"No time for talk!" roared Peter. "It's fight now--before they are in on us! Lights out--and to the front, all of us!"

"Right hoh!" cried Henry, man to man, and ran out the door.

"No, no!" protested Mr. Stanhope thickly, "it is n't fair--"

Peter wheeled and looked at him, personally, for the first time. He had recognized him instantly, and now when he saw what he saw on that sickly green face, his fine eyes hardened.

"Four, I said? I see there are only three men here. No matter--three good ones are more than enough. Larry, stay here! I'll take the front door--the man the front windows--"

But Varney blocked his way to the door with a face more resolute than his own.

"Stand back, Peter. We'll do nothing of the sort. Those are Ryan's men out there. They don't want Mr. Stanhope--you know that. I don't like this place anyhow--I'm going to get out--"

"I'll sizzle in h.e.l.l if you do!" bellowed Peter, and violently pinioned his arms.

But Stanhope, clutching at the chance, struck again for the safety of his skin. "He ought to go," he cried swiftly. "It is n't my quarrel--don't you see? Let go his arm there--you bully!--let him go!"

The shock of that, curiously, surprised Peter into complying. He dropped Varney's arms, turned swiftly to the author and fixed him with a look for which, alone, another man would have cried for his blood. "Did I hear you aright?" he said in an oddly still voice. "Do I understand you to suggest that he be sent out there alone?"

Mr. Stanhope shrank before that look, but this was the utmost concession to it.

"It's not my quarrel," he said moistening his lips--and suddenly, glancing over Peter's shoulder, his eyes lit with a frightened gleam of triumph. "It's he they--"

Over the shouting a single hoa.r.s.e cry rang out very close at hand.

"Curse you for the cowardliest dog G.o.d ever made!" cried Peter, his pa.s.sion breaking its thin veil of calmness like a bullet. "If you interfere in this, you'll not hide afterward where I'll not find you.

Larry! You'll--" Peter turned and broke off short with an exclamation which was a good deal like a groan.

Varney was not there. Taking advantage of Peter's momentary distraction, he had slipped through the door and fled down the hall.

Shaken with the rushing sense of his friend's danger, Peter started wildly for the door. But in that fraction of a second, the lamp on the center table was blown suddenly out and he found himself in inky darkness. At the same moment something thrust itself dexterously between his moving legs and he fell heavily to the floor. Falling he struck out blindly, and his whirling fist collided with something warm and soft.

The next instant he was up and groping madly for the door, his sense of direction all gone from him. But the author lay where he had fallen, quite still, and, for the moment, afraid no longer.

The moment's gain, however, was all that Stanhope needed, though it was no more. In the dark hall where a single candle burned, Varney had met Henry. The instant before, a man's head and shoulders had protruded suddenly through the broken-in parlor window, and Henry, waiting patiently in the shadow of the wall had flatted him to the floor with a heavy chair, which broke in his hands. Then he heard swift footsteps in the hall, and divining what had happened, bounded out.

"Stand clear, man!" cried Varney loudly. "I'm going out."

A prolonged shouting indicated that the promise was heard with approval outside. But not so with Henry, who closed in on him fiercely, crying: "Not hon your bloomin' life, you don't--harskin' your pardon, sir!"

Varney, however, was a thing of nerves and pa.s.sion now, all energy and muscle and concentrated purpose. He shook the man off like a rat, and the next moment burst open the front door.

All this had happened far more quickly than it can be set down. Five minutes had hardly pa.s.sed since Henry's first challenge had rung from the upstairs window. This would have been ample time to carry the house by storm, front and back, had the invaders had the leadership and wit; but these things they lacked. They were still ma.s.sed on the front porch, pell-mell, in a turbulent group, ramping, raging, thirsty for action, but as yet ineffective; though one of them had at that moment set a match to a torch of newspapers and kindling wood. Delay had loosed the hunter's instinct in the half-drunken band: it broke into flame at sight of the quarry. Varney had scarcely shown himself in the half-opened door when some one struck him a savage blow on the chin that sent him reeling backwards.

He had come out to them with no plan, no sense of hostility, and only because, in his disturbed mood, he despised Stanhope so utterly that he would take no protection from him, or give him any share in his own troubles. But at that blow, a demon sprang to life in him which knew no law but an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. His left arm shot out like a piston at the dim flushed face before him, and the face bobbed downward out of sight.

At the same moment, the heavy back of a chair in supple hands descended out of s.p.a.ce behind him with a thud; and a great tall fellow, staggering backward with the unexpected pain of that stroke, for the moment obstructed his comrades. For Henry had followed where he could not lead, and now ranged himself joyously at Varney's side in the narrow threshold.

The setback, however, was trivial. In the next breath, they closed round him with a great shout, thrusting Henry violently to one side. Three men were required for this latter task, who so missed the real sport of the night. Another was caught when the front porch fell in with a crash, and was pulled out with a broken leg an hour later. But enough remained.

Varney was instantly lost in a struggling and kicking hurly-burly of arms and legs, and was borne with them in a rush down the short flight of steps to the lawn. All, of course, could not reach him. So it happened that two or three, on the outskirts of the tossing group, heard the feet of reinforcements in the hallway and wheeled at that sound.

Even in the faint light, Peter's great size made him easily recognizable; and a young man of Hare's party named Bud Spinks, who admired him intensely and had partaken of his hospitality in the town, was still enough himself to cry out:

"Keep away, Mr. Maginnis! This ain't your fuss!"

"You'll see!" shouted Peter, and cleared the wrecked porch at a bound.

In his dash through the darkness for the door he had stumbled over the fragments of Henry's broken chair. One stout leg of it remained in his hand now. Peter's prowess with that weapon has pa.s.sed into legend in Hunston. They tell to this day of a great giant, eight feet tall, watchful eyes in all parts of him, impervious to all blows, hundred-handed and every hand like the kick of a mule, who met ten men almost single-handed that night and routed them utterly.

He was the biggest man in Hunston, the strongest and the most terrible in anger. Bud Spinks, because he did not know whose fuss that was, felt the bite of that anger, and toppled beneath it like a sapling under the woodman's axe. So did poor old Orrick, who had met the others on the road and returned with them, and who was the only man of them all that Peter recognized. Two of those who were looking after Henry, having laid him to rest by this time, rushed Peter from behind. One of them struck him heavily on the point of the jaw as he swung around, and was astonished that he did not appear to notice it. The next instant he fell senseless under a blow that crushed through his upraised fists as a hammer might go through a drumhead. One Peter hit a glancing blow upon the shoulder, and as long as he lived he could never raise that arm above his head again.

Thus Peter was free to fling himself on that violently swaying ma.s.s which he knew held Varney. Even those on the further side knew precisely the moment he struck it. The whole body quivered with the shock of that impact. Those nearer that chair leg and that equally terrible fist had more personal testimony to his presence. There was no resisting either.

They got in many blows upon him, as his bruised body and discolored face showed next morning. But he never once faltered. To himself, with a precious moment lost back in the study and a heart afire to know if he were yet in time, his progress seemed desperately slow; yet he cleft a path for himself as by magic.

Knocking some down, thrusting others aside or frightening them away, he found his answer at last with sudden directness. A big raw-boned fellow, fiercely drunk and working with his feet at something on the ground, wheeled and struck pa.s.sionately at Peter's face. A blow like a cannon shot was his reply, and, for the second time under the impact of that fist, Jim Hackley (though Peter did not know him) measured his length upon the ground. Two or three scattering ones, still up, were hovering in Peter's rear with a discreetness which, it chanced was now quite superfluous. For at that instant, he caught sight of his friend, and immediately all the fight went out of him and his knees shook.

Varney lay anyhow on the trodden gra.s.s, dappled with blood, his head curved fantastically beneath his shoulders. Another had gone down with him and lay half over him, a long arm locked about him in a curious gesture that oddly suggested protection. This one lay face downward, but Varney, as it happened, was on his back, and his upturned face looked in the dusky night the image of death.

Peter dropped his club with a strangled cry, and went down on his hands and knees. No rea.s.suring flutter met the hand which he thrust inside the trampled bosom. That heart seemed stilled. He gathered the limp form in his arms like a child's and turned a dreadful face upon the beaten fragments of the mobbing-party.

"By G.o.d!" he shouted pa.s.sionately. "You've killed him!"

They faded away into the darkness, such of them as could walk, sobered by the horror of that cry, frightened more at that face than at all the blows which had gone before.