With a wild leap to my table I seized a pointed bronze paper cutter. I should have plunged it into his heart, but for the swift intervention of the aged Griselda. "No!" she cried huskily, seizing the blade, "we need nae add murder to this!" I dropped the paper cutter to the floor and threw myself at the purple throat of the beast Pendleton. For a moment the guilty hang-dog look left his eyes and with an oath he thrust out his open hands against my face to throw me off. I was blinded by his huge hot palms against my eyes but I clung convulsively to his throat. His hands spasmodically closed about my neck; a momentary blackness fell upon me but I clung, my fingers eating more savagely into the hateful flesh of his throat. The pent-up force of years of hostility was that instant in my destroying hands. He gurgled and gasped and reeled backward. In the meanwhile Alicia, emerging from her bewilderment and realizing the scene enacting itself with lightning-like rapidity, gave a low cry and sat up, moaning with terror. This vision of Alicia recalled me to myself. I flung his head away from me and I myself staggered backward with the force of my effort. I was breathing like a wrestler as I stood leaning with one hand upon the table. I could not speak. My desire was to fold Alicia in my arms, to press her to me, exulting in her safety. But I dared not move for fear I should topple and fall, with the sheer working of the rage that was tearing me. "Go—Alicia!" I gasped out finally. "Upstairs. Leave us!" Dead, banal phrases, when I panted to pour out endearments! With a look of wild anxiety from Pendleton to me, like a terrified doe, Alicia rose, stood for a moment irresolute, then suddenly throwing up her hands to her face, she ran out of the room with a piteous stifled cry. We stood for a space silent, all three of us, Griselda, Pendleton and I, after the door had closed. "Now, Pendleton," I said finally, when I was a little more sure of my voice, "nothing you can say will matter in the slightest. We saw. Question is what d’you mean to do?" He glanced hostilely toward Griselda. She, interpreting his look, flashed defiantly, with arms akimbo. "Look, ye villain, look your fill. I will na leave the master alone with a murderer, the likes of you! No, I will na!" How often I have wished since then that she had not been so zealous. "Talk about murder!" Pendleton, with the ghost of a grin, pointed at the paper knife still clutched in Griselda’s hand. "You needn’t be afraid on my account," I told Griselda quietly. "I don’t fear him." "I will na go away," obstinately retorted Griselda, moving forward, pushing Pendleton aside like a man, and placing her back against the door. "Very well, Griselda," I said. "I have no secrets to hide from you. And this man has betrayed what he can never hope to hide. Pendleton, what do you mean to do?"