“Yes. They do know you by name. One of them said something about ‘spotting’ you to-night.” Now, when one has scattered the seed of enmity impartially in all soils a goodly crop of ill-wishers may be looked for in any harvest field however well inclosed. Since he had never turned aside to avoid a quarrel in any one of the ill-starred years, Brant had enemies a-plenty; but holding his own life lightly he had never let the fact trouble him. None the less, he was curious enough to ask Deverney if he could describe the two men. The bartender could and did. “One of them is tall and rather thin, about the size and shape of the Professor, only he has a beard like a billy goat, and a shock of red hair that looks as if it hadn’t been cut for a month of Sundays. The other is--well, I should say he looks like a chunky man gone thin, if you can savez that; smooth face, with a sort of bilious look, and the wickedest eye you ever saw in a man’s head.” Brant shook his head slowly. “I don’t recall either of them,” he said. Then the Berserker in him came to the surface, and he took the pistol from his pocket and twirled the chambers to see that they were all filled. “If they know me, they know what to expect, and I’ll try and see that they are not disappointed. Much obliged for the hint. Good night, Tom.” He went out with his head up and his hands in his pockets, bearing himself as if he would as soon end the bad day with a battle to the death as otherwise. At the corner above he saw the two men standing in a doorway on the opposite side of the street, recognised them at once from Deverney’s description, and, giving place to a sudden impulse of recklessness, went straight across to them. They paid no attention to him, not even when he stopped and looked them over with a cool glance of appraisal that was little less than a challenge. But when he went on they followed leisurely and at a safe distance. Brant knew they were dogging him, but he neither loitered nor hastened. If they chose to overtake and waylay him he would know what to do. If they did not, the morning newspapers would lack a stirring item, and two footpads would have a longer lease of life. In the challenging glance he had passed the taller man by as a stranger, but the face of the other haunted him. There was something exasperatingly familiar about it, and yet no single feature by which it could be identified. Analyzed in detail, the puzzle arranged itself above and below a line drawn across the upper lip of the half-familiar face. The broad flat nose, high cheek bones, and sunken eyes were like those of some one he had seen before. But the hard mouth with the lines of cruelty at the corners, and the projecting lower jaw, seemed not to belong to the other features. “It’s a freak, and nothing more or less,” he told himself, when he had reasoned out so much of the puzzle. “The fellow has the top of somebody else’s head--somebody I have known. I wonder how he got it?”