Both men watched me intently, but they got none of the satisfaction that they hoped. It was simply that the bitterness of death was over. That was all. Fear was something that I was no longer capable of feeling. To be worried to death by mastiffs was just like any other death, then. I understood how it was that martyrs for religion, or any cause in which they believed, died so quietly. Helzephron cursed deeply. "Get it over," he said. "Take the dogs to the far end of the cave. When I blow this whistle let them go. You'll hear them running up behind you, Sir John," he said, with an insane chuckle. Vargus disappeared. I stared out at the cave mouth. Each moment it grew lighter. I thought that I should have liked to have seen one more summer dawn. But Helzephron was lifting his whistle; and then the mouth of the cave seemed to recede and shrink to the size of a mere window. A mere window. With idle curiosity I saw how a fat spider was slowly descending his swinging thread, and I was a child again, seated at the nursery window.... The whistle blew a shrill, echoing blast. At once my mind awoke to full consciousness, and I braced myself to die without a cry. The cave mouth became itself again, and the spider ... _Hanging by one arm and a leg, half-way down a stout rope, was a short, thick-set figure...._ As the rapid thud of the racing dogs grew loud the figure's right arm raised itself. _Bang! Crash! Bang! Crash!_ a wild howl of pain, thunderous echoes rolling down the cavern, and Helzephron on his feet in time to see something bounding towards him like an india-rubber ball. I knew who that was. I had one glimpse of a terrible grinning face as Danjuro leapt at the hawk-faced man; heard a strangled scream and a long, crunching crack, and saw two whirling figures crash to the floor. I can't express the suddenness of it all. Before my brain could register the impression, another person was sprinting by me, yelling like a fiend. Then Danjuro rose from the floor--alone--and my ropes were being divided, my stiff limbs rubbed, and a calm, exultant voice remarked: "Exit Honourable Helzephron." I began to laugh weakly. "You were just in time, Danjuro. Have you killed him?" He was about to reply when there was a diversion. Charles Thumbwood appeared. He had Mr. Vargus by the collar, and was kicking him along to the accompaniment of flowers of language that I shall not attempt to reproduce. "Caught 'im at the telephone," gasped Charles. "Gr-r-r, you little swine"--a furious kick--"Gr-r-r, you slime-lapping leper you! 'E was telephoning to 'is friends, Sir John. Thank Gawd we come in time, Sir John! Gr-r-r, there's one as you won't forget in an 'urry!" and lifting Mr. Vargus several inches from the floor with a final kick, Little Thumbwood flung him away, began to feel me all over with trembling hands, and burst into a flood of tears.