“I ca-n't,” she faltered, and her cheeks reddened through their dead pallor; “my waist--buttons--behind. I can't and I won't.” The thief shifted his derby hat from his left hand to his right, holding it fast with his little finger hooked under the brim, while the other fingers kept the cocked revolver poised and ready. “I'll help you,” he said; and as the girl tried to dodge away from him he shoved a stubby finger under the collar of her blouse and with a hard jerk ripped the lace away, leaving her white neck half bare. At her cry and the sound of the tearing lace her father forgot the threat of the gunbarrel--forgot everything. “You vile hound!” he panted. “Keep your filthy hand off of my daughter!” And up he came out of his seat. And old Judge Priest came with him, and both of them lunged forward over the seatback at the ruffian, three feet away. So many things began to happen then, practically all simultaneously, that never were any of the active participants able to recall exactly just what did happen and the order of the happening. It stood out afterward, though, from a jumble of confused recollections, that young Mrs. McLaurin screamed and fainted; that Bessie Lyon fainted quietly without screaming; and that little Rita Covington neither fainted nor screamed, but snatched outward with a lightning quick slap of her hand at the fist of the thief which held the pistol, so that the bullet, exploding out of it with a jet of smoke, struck in the aisle instead of striking her father or Judge Priest. It was this bullet, the first and only one fired in the whole mix-up, that went slithering diagonally along the car floor, guttering out a hole like a worm-track in the wood and kicking up splinters right in the face of Unde Zach Matthews and Judge Priest's Jeff as they lay lapped in tight embrace, so that they instantly separated and rose, like a brace of flushed blackbirds, to the top of the seat in front. From that point of vantage, with eyes popped and showing white all the way round, they witnessed what followed in the attitude of quiveringly interested onlookers.