The Coloradan freed himself with a jerk, and shook off his assailant, for he was a powerful man, too, though less sturdy than Andreas. He drew back half-a-pace, and faced the infuriated husband. His hand wandered half mechanically to the faithful six-shooter, which after all those years in civilised England old habit still made him carry always in his pocket. But he thought better of it after a moment—these Britishers have such a nasty insular way of stringing one up for the merest accident!—and answered instead, with an ugly smile, “It’s _her_ fault, not mine. She snatched a letter away from me. It’s my own, and I want it back. She won’t give it up to me.” Andreas Hausberger had his faults; but he had too much sense of dignity to bandy words with an intruder who had insulted his wife—above all, to bandy them in his wife’s very presence. It mattered little to him just then what that question about the letter might really import. He stepped forward in his wrath once more, and caught the Seer by the shoulders. “You cur!” he cried, pushing him before him. “How dare you answer me like that?” And, with a sudden wrench, he flung the fellow against the door, bruising and hurting him violently. The Coloradan rushed back on him. There was a short, sharp scuffle. Then Andreas, getting the better, opened the door with a dash, and dragged his opponent after him. At the head of the stairs, he paused, and gave him a sounding kick. The Coloradan writhed and squirmed, but, strong as he was, he found himself no match for the gigantic Tyroler. Besides, he was less used than his antagonist to these hand-to-hand struggles. Andreas, for his part, was quite in his element. “A _Wirth_ who can’t turn out a noisy or drunken guest, isn’t worth his salt,” he had said one day to Florian long ago in the Zillerthal; he was well used, indeed, of old to such impromptu encounters. The Seer on the contrary was more accustomed to the bowie and the six-shooter than to wrestling and scuffling. He yielded after a moment to Andreas’s heavy hand, only stopping to shout back through the open drawing-room door, “Then you owe me fifty pounds, Signora, for that letter!” Andreas hauled him down the stairs, dragged him, half-resisting, through the hall and vestibule, opened the front door with one free hand, hastily, and kicked his man down the steps with a volley of angry oaths in his native German. Then he slammed the door in the face of the discomfited Seer (who had rushed back again to assault him), and went upstairs once more, as outwardly cool as he could, but hot in the face and hotter at heart, to Linnet.