Honeycutt all the time was whining like a feeble spirit in pain, his utterances like the final dwindlings of a mean-spirited dog. King had never heard him whine like that; Honeycutt was more given to chucklings and clackings of defiance and derision. Perhaps Brodie as the ultimate argument had manhandled him. King threw open the door. There stood old Honeycutt, tremblingly upheld upon his sawed-off broom-handle. Beyond him, facing the door, was Swen Brodie, his immense body towering over Honeycutt's spindling one, his bestial face hideous in its contortions as at once he gloated and threatened. In Brodie's hands, which were twice the size of an ordinary man's, was a little wooden box, to which Honeycutt's rheumy eyes were glued with frantic despair. Evidently the box had only now been taken from its hiding-place under a loose board in the floor; the board lay tossed to one side, and Brodie's legs straddled the opening. Honeycutt did not know immediately that any one had entered; either his old ears had not heard, or his excited mind was concentrated so excludingly on Brodie that he had no thought of aught else. Brodie, however, turned his small, restless eyes, that were like two shiny bright-blue buttons, upon the intruder. His great mouth stood open showing his teeth. On that lower, deformed, undershot jaw of Swen Brodie were those monstrous teeth which were his pride, a misshapen double row which he kept clean while his body went unwashed, and between which the man could bend a nail. Swen Brodie was the biggest man who had ever come to the mountains, men said, unless that honour went to one of the Seven who more than a half-century ago had perished with Gus Ingle. And even so Brodie kept the honour in his own blood, boasting that Ingle's giant companion, the worst of a bad lot, was his own father's father. The elder Brodie had come from Iceland, had lived with a squaw, had sired the first "Swen" Brodie. And this last scion of a house of outlawry and depravity, the Blue Devil, as many called him, stood six or eight clear inches above Mark King, who was well above six feet. Whatever pride was in him went first to his teeth, next to his enormous stature; he denied that his father had been so big a man; he flew into a towering rage at the suggestion; he cursed his father's memory as a fabric of lies. His head was all face, flattening off an inch above the hairless brows; his face was all enormous, double-toothed mouth. Slowly the big mouth closed. The shiny blue eyes narrowed and glinted; the coarse face reddened. Brodie's throat corded, the Adam's apple moved repeatedly up and down as he swallowed inarticulately. This old Honeycutt saw. He jerked about and quick lights sprang up in his despairing eyes. He began to sputter but Brodie's loud voice had come back to him and drowned out the old man's shrillings. Brodie ripped out a string of oaths, demanding: "Who told _you_ to come in? You--you----"