“I’m here with you, and I mean to stay,” he insisted. “You may need-- By Jove! it’s begun.” The dance stopped and the clamour sank into a hush, which was sharply rent by a blast of profanity, a jangling crash of the piano keys, and a woman’s scream. Then the two fought their way into the thick of the crowd around the piano. A drunken ruffian was grasping the woman’s arm and brandishing a revolver over her head. “You won’t play it, won’t ye? And ye’ll give Ike Gasset a piece of yer lip? By God, I’ll show ye!” Brant’s pistol was out before he spoke. “Drop it right where you are, and get out of here before I kill you,” he said quietly. The man’s reply was a snap shot in Brant’s face, and, though his aim was bad, both Hobart and Brant felt the wind of the bullet passing between them. The crack of the pistol was the signal for a scene a description of which no man has ever yet been able to set down calmly in black on white. Shouts, oaths, a mad rush for the open air foiled by a fiercer closing in of the crowd around the piano; all this while the ruffian levelled his weapon and fired again. At the death-speeding instant the woman started to her feet, and the bullet intended for Brant struck her fairly in the breast. Hobart heard the sharp snap of the steel corset stay, and saw Brant, catching her as she reeled, fire once, twice, thrice at the desperado. Then the assayer lifted up his voice in a shout that dominated the tumult: “Silverettes! Out with them--they’ve killed a woman!” There was a fierce affray, a surging charge, and when the place was cleared Hobart ran back. Brant was on his knees beside the woman. The smoking oil lamps burned yellow in the powder reek, but there was light enough to show that she was past help. None the less, Hobart offered to go for a doctor. Brant shook his head and rose stiffly. “She doesn’t need one; she is dead.” Hobart grasped the situation with far-seeing prescience. “Then you have nothing to stay here for; let us get out while we can.” The din of the street battle rang clamorous at the front, and he took Brant’s arm to lead him to the door, which opened upon the alley in the rear. “Come on,” he urged; “they will be back here presently, and you have nothing to fight for now.” “No.” Brant yielded as one in a trance, but at the door he broke away, to dart back with the gray eyes aflame and fierce wrath crying for vengeance. Unnoted of all, the wounded desperado had lain where Brant’s fusillade had dropped him. But now he was on hands and knees, trying to drag himself out of the room. Brant was quick, but the assayer pinioned him before the ready weapon could flash from its holster. “Good God, man, that would be murder!” he panted, wrestling with the avenger of blood, and possessing himself of the pistol. “Come on out of this!”