When Taylor threw the door open he saw Carrington, far back in the room, swinging a chair over his head. At Taylor’s appearance he threw the chair with all the force his frenzy of fear could put into the effort. Taylor ducked, and the chair flew past him, sailing uninterruptedly outside and over the porch railing. Carrington ran through the big front room, through the next room—the sitting-room—knocking chairs over in his flight, throwing a big center table at his silent, implacable pursuer. He slammed the sitting-room door and tried to lock it, but he could not turn the key quickly enough, and Taylor burst the door open, almost plunging against Carrington as he came through it. Carrington ran into the dining-room, shoved the dining-room table in Taylor’s way as Taylor tried to reach him; but Taylor leaped over the obstruction, and when Carrington dodged into Marion Harlan’s room, Taylor was so close that he might have grasped the big man. Taylor had said no word. The big man saw two guns swinging at Taylor’s hips, and he wondered vaguely why the man did not use them. It occurred to Carrington as he plunged through Marion Harlan’s room into Martha’s, and from there to the kitchen, and back again to the dining-room, that Taylor was not going to shoot him, and his panic partially left him. And yet there was a gleam in Taylor’s eyes that made his soul cringe in terror—the cold, bitter fury of a peaceloving man thoroughly aroused. Twice, as Taylor pursued Carrington through the sitting-room again and into another big room that adjoined it, Carrington’s courage revived long enough to permit him to consider making a stand against Taylor, but each time as he stiffened with the determination, the terrible rage in Taylor’s eyes dissuaded him, and he continued to evade the clash. But he knew that the clash must come, and when, in their rapid, headlong movements, Carrington came close to the front door and tried to slip out of it, Taylor lunged against him and struck at him, the fist just grazing Carrington’s jaw, the big man understood that Taylor was intent on beating him with his fists. Had it not been for his previous encounter with Taylor, Carrington would not have hesitated, for he knew how to protect himself in a fight; but there was something in Taylor’s eyes now to add to the memory of that other fight, and Carrington wanted no more of it. But at last he was forced to stand. Ducking to evade the blow aimed at his jaw when he tried to dart out of the front door, he slipped. Reeling, in an effort to regain his equilibrium, he plunged into another big room. It was a room that was little used—an old-fashioned parlor, kept trim and neat against the coming of visitors, but a room whose gloominess the occupants of the house usually avoided. The shades were down, partly concealing heavy wooden blinds—which were closed. And the only light in the room was that which came from a little square window high up in the side wall.