"I am prepared for a fight. You'll get plenty of it before you're through--if you don't lie down and be good." There was malice in his look, complacent consciousness of his power. More, there was an impulse to reveal to this young man whom he intended to ruin, at least one of the motives that was driving him. He yielded to the impulse. "I'm going to tell you something. I think I would have let you out of this deal, if you hadn't been so fresh. But you made a grand-stand play before the girl I am going to marry. You showed off your horse to make a bid for her favor. You paraded before her window in the car to attract her attention. I saw you. You rode me down. You'll get no mercy. I'm going to break you. I'm going to send you back to your father, Brandon, senior, in worse condition than when you left, ten years ago." He sneered as Trevison started and stepped on the floor, rigid. "How did you recognize me?" Curiosity had dulled the young man's passion; his tone was hoarse. "How?" Corrigan laughed, mockingly. "Did you think you could repose any confidence in a woman you have known only about a month? Did you think she wouldn't tell me--her promised husband? She has told me--everything that she succeeded in getting out of you. She is heart and soul with me in this deal. She is ambitious. Do you think she would hesitate to sacrifice a clod-hopper like you? She's very clever, Trevison; she's deep, and more than a match for you in wits. Fight, if you like, you'll get no sympathy there." Trevison's faith in Miss Benham had received a shock; Corrigan's words had not killed it, however. "You're a liar!" he said. Corrigan flushed, but smiled icily. "How many people know that you have coal on your land, Trevison?" He saw Trevison's hands clench, and he laughed in grim amusement. It pleased him to see his enemy writhe and squirm before him; the grimness came because of a mental picture, in his mind at this minute, of Trevison confiding in the girl. He looked up, the smile freezing on his lips, for within a foot of his chest was the muzzle of Trevison's pistol. He saw the trigger finger contracting; saw Trevison's free hand clenched, the muscles corded and knotted--he felt the breathless, strained, unreal calm that precedes tragedy, grim and swift. He slowly stiffened, but did not shrink an inch. It took him seconds to raise his gaze to Trevison's face, and then he caught his breath quickly and smiled with straight lips. "No; you won't do it, Trevison," he said, slowly; "you're not that kind." He deliberately swung around in the chair and drew another cigar from a box on the desk top, lit it and leaned back, again facing the pistol. Trevison restored the pistol to the holster, brushing a hand uncertainly over his eyes as though to clear his mental vision, for the shock that had come with the revelation of Miss Benham's duplicity had made his brain reel with a lust to kill. He laughed hollowly. His voice came cold and hard: