“Throw it through him, Jedge! Now's your chance. Wade in, Jedge!” The desperate ferocity of the curt phrases seemed to move him. He raised the revolver. Then came in tones of triumph: “I'll bet high on the Jedge!” He dropped the revolver on the floor, and fled from the room. The first feeling of the crowd of men was utter astonishment, but in a moment or two this gave place to half-contemptuous sympathy. What expression this sentiment would have found it is impossible to say, for just then Bill Hitchcock observed with a sneer: “As he's run, I may as well walk;” and he stepped towards the bar-room. Instantly Crocker threw himself in front of him with his face on fire. “Walk--will ye?” he burst out, the long-repressed rage flaming up--“walk! when you've jumped the best man in Garotte--walk! No, by God, you'll crawl, d'ye hear? crawl--right out of this camp, right now!” and he dropped his revolver on Hitchcock's breast. Then came a wild chorus of shouts. “That's right! That's the talk! Crawl, will ye! Down on yer hands and knees. Crawl, damn ye! Crawl!” and a score of revolvers covered the stranger. For a moment he stood defiant, looking his assailants in the eyes. His face seemed to have grown thinner, and his moustache twitched with the snarling movement of a brute at bay. Then he was tripped up and thrown forwards amid a storm of, “Crawl, damn ye--crawl!” And so Hitchcock crawled, on hands and knees, out of Doolan's. Lawyer Rablay, too, was never afterwards seen in Garotte. Men said his nerves had “give out.” JULY, 1892. * * * * * GULMORE, THE BOSS The habits of the Gulmore household were in some respects primitive. Though it was not yet seven o'clock two negro girls were clearing away the breakfast things under the minute supervision of their mistress, an angular, sharp-faced woman with a reedy voice, and nervously abrupt movements. Near the table sat a girl of nineteen absorbed in a book. In an easy-chair by the open bay-window a man with a cigar in his mouth was reading a newspaper. Jonathan Byrne Gulmore, as he always signed himself, was about fifty years of age; his heavy frame was muscular, and the coarse dark hair and swarthy skin showed vigorous health. There was both obstinacy and combativeness in his face with its cocked nose, low irregular forehead, thick eyebrows, and square jaw, but the deep-set grey eyes gleamed at times with humorous comprehension, and the usual expression of the countenance was far from ill-natured. As he laid the paper on his knees and looked up, he drew the eye. His size and strength seemed to be the physical equivalents of an extraordinary power of character and will. When Mrs. Gulmore followed the servants out of the room the girl rose from her chair and went towards the door. She was stopped by her father's voice: