The idiot thrust his fingers into his loose mouth, his shirt open on a hairy pendulous chest. The Hatburn who had not yet spoken showed a row of tobacco-brown broken teeth. “He mightn't get a heave on that breath,” he asserted. The latter lounged over against a set of open shelves where, David saw, lay a heavy rusted revolver. Hatburn picked up the weapon and turned it slowly in his thin grasp. “I'm carrying the mail,” David repeated, his hand on the bag. “You've got no call on this or on me.” He added the last with tremendous effort. It seemed unspeakable that he should be there, the Hatburns before him, and merely depart. “What do you think of putting the stage under a soft little strawberry like that?” the other inquired. For answer there was a stunning report, a stinging odor of saltpeter; and David felt a sharp burning on his shoulder, followed by a slow warmish wet, spreading. “I didn't go to do just that there!” the Hatburn who had fired explained. “I wanted to clip his ear, but he twitched like.” David picked up the mail bag and took a step backward in the direction he had come. The other moved between him and the door. “If you get out,” he said, “it'll be through the hog-wash.” David placed the bag on the floor, stirred by a sudden realization--he had charge of the stage, official responsibility for the mail. He was no longer a private individual; what his mother had commanded, entreated, had no force here and now. The Hatburns were unlawfully detaining him. As this swept over him, a smile lighted his fresh young cheeks, his frank mouth, his eyes like innocent flowers. Hatburn shot again; this time the bullet flicked at David's old felt hat. With his smile lingering he smoothly leveled the revolver from his pocket and shot the mocking figure in the exact center of the pocket patched on his left breast. David wheeled instantly, before the other Hatburn running for him, and stopped him with a bullet as remorselessly placed as the first. The two men on the floor stiffened grotesquely and the idiot crouched in a corner, whimpering. David passed his hand across his brow; then he bent and grasped the mail bag. He was still pausing when the remaining Hatburn strode into the kitchen. The latter whispered a sharp oath. David shifted the bag; but the elder had him before he could bring the revolver up. A battering blow fell, knocked the pistol clattering over the floor, and David instinctively clutched the other's wrist. The blows multiplied, beating David into a daze, through which a single realization persisted--he must not lose his grip upon the arm that was swinging him about the room, knocking over chairs, crashing against the table, even drawing him across the hot iron of the stove. He must hold on! He saw the face above him dimly through the deepening mist; it seemed demoniacal, inhuman, reaching up to the ceiling--a yellow giant bent on his destruction....