Right then there was in him the awful conviction that he could not go and face her, wherever she was, so utterly a renegade had he shown himself. He was taking all the blame on himself. He had run away from a laugh--a fool obsessed by a silly notion of the north country--in this new light it seemed silly. He had not waited like a man to hear the truth from her! He had betrayed all the cause; he could not go back to the drive. He had listened to a lying sneak from a detective agency and had rebuffed, insulted, abused horribly Lida Kennard! Lida Kennard! The name seemed to be hammering at his eardrums. The granddaughter of Echford Flagg! A lone girl trying to save a cause! In her anguished desperation she had been willing to give herself in the way of sacrifice even to such a recreant as Ward Latisan must have appeared in his boyish and selfish resentment! Oh, the sun was cool in comparison with the fires which raged in him. The fatuous Crowley moved toward the window. "Well, what say, old boy?" When the young man turned slowly the operative stuck out his hand. "I'm agreeing with you--no grudges! Let's shake!" "Yes, you did it," said Latisan. He did not raise his voice. He was talking as much to himself as to Crowley. "A tip to me, you called it." "We have to do those things to get quick results," Crowley agreed, patronizingly. "Give us your hand, boy!" Crowley got what he asked for. He was not prepared for the amazing suddenness of the open-handed blow that fell on the side of his head and sent him staggering into a corner. Mern grabbed up the telephone. Latisan leaped and tore the instrument from the chief's grasp, ripped it loose from its fastenings, and hurled it through the ground-glass door. Mern was a big man; he had been invincible as a police officer. But when he leaped and struck at Latisan, the latter countered with his toil-hardened fist and knocked Mern down. Crowley had also served with the police. But he was no match for the berserker rage which had transformed the man from the woods. Latisan whirled again to Crowley, beat him to his knees, set his foot against the antagonist's breast and drove him violently backward, and he fell across Mern. But Latisan was not through. Men who had viewed John Latisan in the old days when he came roaring down to town, had they been present in the Vose-Mern offices that day, would have recognized in the grandson the Latisan temperament operating in its old form and would not have been surprised. The avenger picked up Mern's desk chair. He swung it about him, smashing everything in the room which could be smashed. He flung away the fragments of the chair and rushed into the outer office. The fat girl was calling for central, for police. "Hand it over!" he commanded. "And you'd all better step outside," he suggested, after he had torn loose the wires. "I'm using the office right now."