“Good-by, fair worl’!” Hitch Diamond mourned as he crawled to the edge of the lumber and looked down. “’Tain’t no hope fer pore old Hitchie onless I kin hop offen dis lumber atter dat man is done passed down in de alley.” But the men on the ground had foreseen that possibility, and were measuring their progress down the by-paths by the progress of the men on the lumber-piles. Seeing this, Hitch Diamond’s heart turned to lead, his blood to water, and his giant frame seemed to crumble like chalk. Already he felt himself mortally stricken and dying. He caught himself trying to speak, to utter words of encouragement to himself, but his teeth clicked together like castanets, and his whispered words fell upon terror-deafened ears. He sprang to his feet and stood glaring at the approaching lights like some great beast trapped in a jungle. Unconsciously he shut his fingers tight, his hands forming two immense iron fists. That unconscious action made a man of him again! Those iron fists were the fists of a prize-fighter--Hitch Diamond, the Tickfall Tiger! Courage flowed through his veins like some magic liquor. “Hitch never th’ows up de sponge!” he growled. “I fights to de eend!” VI THE TICKFALL TIGER STRIKES. Hitch sat down upon the lumber-pile and slipped quietly over the edge, preparing to descend. He hung the seat of his trousers upon a splinter and lunged forward in a sudden panic, tearing the garment almost off his body. As he climbed quietly down the side of the pile, he hung the leg of his trousers upon a projecting stick and ripped the leg almost up to the waistband. Dropping down upon the sawdust path, he took a step or two and found that his torn pantaloons hindered his progress, and might afford his pursuers a hand-hold for his capture. Sorrowfully he took the garment off and stood in his giant strength, panoplied in his red underclothes! “There he goes!” a voice called in the dark. Clenching his iron fists, Hitch started at full speed. Ten men blocked the entrance before him. He went through them like an express-train, rolling some of them heels over head. A man ran out of a by-path, and his head collided with Hitch’s fist like a punching-bag. As the negro ran another, another, and another came out of the little pathways, and each one went down like a bag of salt. Thus Hitch arrived at the main passageway. Then he found every by-path pouring forth its quota of men, every thoroughfare contributed its number, and every man upon the lumber-piles ran toward one spot to illumine the passage with their dark lanterns. “Lawdymussy!” Hitch sighed. “Ef I don’t mix wid ’em, dey’ll shoot me!” To the end of their lives, those powerful, husky sawmill men told with awe-stricken voices of the fight of that giant black in the lumber yard. Hitch mixed with them. No man dared to use his pistol for fear of killing a friend. It was a hand-to-hand battle, one negro against forty mill-hands.