An event which made the detective’s very blood boil, and still one in which he could not interfere, furnishes the cap sheaf of this array of horrors. It transpired at Fowler’s Patch, east of Shenandoah, a little later in the month, and the actors in it were Chas. Hayes, Dan Kelly—called also Manus Kull and “the Bum”—and Ed. Lawler, members of McKenna’s own division. They were out on a spree until four in the morning, when they went to the house of a poor old woman, named Downey, who kept a she-been-shop, roused her from her sleep, and, after drinking, robbed her of her money—which was but a small sum—and then forced her to join them in finishing their orgies. They were finally all very drunk, and Kelly took a pail and proceeded to fill it from the landlady’s whisky barrel, which sat in a corner, across two large rocks, and the woman interfered. Kelly, at this, had his fiercest passions aroused, and, fired by the liquor, was ready for anything. The woman still resisting, he raised her in his arms, being a muscular and powerful man, carried her bodily to the almost red-hot stove and threw her upon it, face downward, and was holding her there, despite her frantic struggles and loud cries, to be roasted and burned to death, when Hayes came to the rescue, struck Kelly under the ear, knocked him down, and liberated the badly injured old lady. Her hands and face were shriveled, broiled in deep, large patches, and there is no doubt that, had she not been taken off the stove by Hayes, she would have been killed. As it was, she had to remain in bed, and for weeks was not able to sit up. Still no arrests were made. [Illustration: “_He carried her to the almost red-hot cook stove, and threw her upon it._”] Kelly challenged Hayes to fight him, for intermeddling with an affair that, he said, belonged entirely to him, and they walked out in the highway, just at daybreak, all by themselves, the old woman still writhing and screaming with pain, and fought ten rounds, Hayes, though a much lighter man than his antagonist, giving Kelly a severe pummeling and coming out ahead in almost every contest, until Kelly gave it up. Before they left, however, Kelly visited his intended victim, and, striking his fist in her very face, said, with an oath: “It’s about your time! I’ll burn your accursed body up yet! So look out!” He would have set fire to the building and executed the threat, at the moment, only Hayes insisted that he should leave her, which he did. Hayes sent a physician to the woman’s house immediately. He found its sole occupant incapable of answering a single question. The little mind the woman had was for the time quite distracted, and the floor on fire, from the upsetting of the stove. Had she been left alone half an hour longer she and her house would have been reduced to ashes. ————●———— CHAPTER XXIII. GOOD OLD MICKY CUFF.