“It is your father, Alice! Oh, God, save us!” exclaimed Mrs. Chester, just as Colonel Chester, with one violent kick of his boot, burst open the door, and, purple and convulsed with rage, stood among them. “Who admitted this man? Who sent for him?” he demanded, in a furious voice. “I did. I sent for him,” said the mother, pale with fear and feebleness, but wishing to shield her daughter. “I did! I wrote him a note,” murmured the daughter, in a dying voice, sick with terror, but wishing to save her mother. “Traitors! Shameless household traitors! so there are a pair of you! a desirable wife and daughter! a very suitable mother and daughter! But I’ll find a way to punish you both. I’ll——” Here he was interrupted by Sinclair, who, turning to him, said, in a composed but stern voice: “Colonel Chester, visit your anger and reproaches upon me, who knew of your prohibition, not upon those who possibly knew nothing about it.” “You have the insolence to tell me, sir, to remind me, that you knew of my prohibition to cross my threshold! while standing here in my house, in the very heart of my house, my wife’s bedchamber!” exclaimed Colonel Chester furiously. “In your wife’s sick-chamber, sir, where, as a Christian minister, it is my bounden duty sometimes to come.” “And, d—— you, from whence I’ll put you out!” exclaimed the infuriated man. “I will go. Good-evening, Mrs. Chester; good-evening, Alice. I leave you in the care of Heaven,” said Sinclair, wishing, by all means, to avoid the disgrace of a struggle. “Go! what, go quietly like an honored guest dismissed? No, d—— you, you came surreptitiously, and you shall depart involuntarily. No, d—— you, I will put you out!” vociferated the maniac, in an ungovernable fury, springing upon Sinclair. A violent struggle ensued. Sinclair acted entirely upon the defensive, saying, continually, as he could make himself heard: “Colonel Chester, let me go! I will leave quietly; I would have done so at first.” And now the deathly grip and struggle went on in silence, interrupted only by the short, curt, hissing exclamations of the enraged man through his now whitened lip and clenched teeth. Sinclair was half the age and double the weight and strength of his opponent, and could easily have mastered him, but did not want the odium of doing it. While wrestling desperately on the defensive, he expostulated once more: “Colonel Chester—not for my sake, but for your own—for your family’s, for honor’s sake, let me depart in peace!” “Ah, villain!” exclaimed the madman, finding his strength failing, and suddenly drawing a pistol, he pointed it at Sinclair’s temple and fired. Sinclair suddenly started, and the bullet went through the window, shattering the glass. Chester now raised the spent pistol and aimed with it a violent blow upon Sinclair’s head. Sinclair quickly caught his descending hand, when——