John Bruce flung himself across the hall and against the door, It yielded without resistance, and the impetus of his own rush carried him, staggering, far into the room. Two forms were circling there under the gas light as though in the throes of some mad dance--only the face of the woman was deathly white, and her small clenched fists beat frantically at the face of the man whose arms were around her. John Bruce sprang forward. He laughed aloud, unnaturally. His brain, his mind, was whirling; but something soft was grasped in his two encircling hands, and that was why he laughed--because his soul laughed. His fingers pressed tighter. It was Crang's throat that was soft under his fingers. Suddenly the room swirled around him. A giddiness seemed to seize upon him--and that soft thing in his grip slipped from his fingers and escaped him. He brushed his hand across his eyes. It would pass, of course. It was strange that he should go giddy like that, and that his limbs should be trembling as though with the ague! Again he brushed his hand across his eyes. It would pass off. He could see better now. Claire had somehow fallen to the floor; but she was rising to her knees now, using the side of the bed for support, and---- Her voice rang wildly through the room. “Look out! Oh, look out!” she cried. To John Bruce it seemed as though something leaped at him out of space--and struck. The blow, aimed at his side, which was still bandaged, went home. It brought an agony that racked and tore and twisted at every nerve in his body. It wrung a moan from his lips, it brought the sweat beads bursting out upon his forehead--but it cleared his brain. Yes, it was Doctor Crang--but disreputable in appearance as he had never before seen the man. Crang's clothes were filthy and unkempt, as though the man had fallen somewhere in the mire and was either unconscious or callous of the fact; his hair draggled in a matted way over his forehead, and though his face worked with passion, and the passion brought a curious hectic rose-color to supplant the customary lifeless gray of his cheeks, the eyes were most strangely glazed and fixed. And again John Bruce laughed--and with a vicious guard swept aside a second blow aimed at his side, and his left fist, from a full arm swing, crashed to the point of Doctor Crang's jaw. But the next instant they had closed, their arms locked around each other's waists, their chins dug hard into each other's shoulders. And they rocked there, and swayed, and lurched, a curious impotence in their ferocity--and toppled to the floor.