“_Un sage qui passe interrompt mille drâmes_,” flashed in Eppie’s mind. But on this occasion, the sage had to do more than pass--was forced, indeed, to provide the drama. He was speaking in a voice so dispassionately firm that had Archie been a little less drunk or a little less sober it must have exerted an almost hypnotic effect upon him. But the command to go home reached a brain inflamed and hardly dazed. Goliath fell upon David, and Eppie, with a curious mingling of exultation and panic, saw the two men locked in an animal struggle. For a moment Gavan’s cool alertness and scientific resource were overborne by sheer brute force; in another he had recovered himself, and Archie’s face streamed suddenly with blood. Another blow, couched like a lance, it seemed, was in readiness, wary and direct, when Mrs. MacHendrie, from behind, seized Gavan around the neck and, with a shrill scream, hung to him and dragged him back. Helpless and enmeshed, he received a savage blow from her husband, and, still held in the wife’s strangling clutch, he and she reeled back together. At this flagrant violation of fair play the onlookers interposed. Archie was dragged off, and Eppie, catching Gavan as he staggered free of his encumbrance, turned, while she held him by the shoulders, fiercely on Mrs. MacHendrie. “You well deserve every thrashing you get,” she said, her voice stilled by the very force of its intense anger. Mrs. MacHendrie had covered her face with her shawl. “My mon was a’ bluid,” she sobbed. “I couldna stan’ an’ see him done to death.” “Of course you couldn’t; it was most natural of you,” said Gavan. The blood trickled over his brow and cheek as, gently freeing himself from Eppie, he straightened his collar and looked at Mrs. MacHendrie with sympathetic curiosity. “Natural!” said Eppie. “It was dastardly. You deserve every thrashing you get. I hope no one will interfere for you next time.” “My dear Eppie!” Gavan murmured, while Mrs. MacHendrie continued to weep humbly. “Why shouldn’t I say it? I am disgusted with her.” Eppie turned almost as fierce a stillness of look and tone upon him as upon Mrs. MacHendrie. “Let me tie up your head, Gavan. Yes, indeed, you are covered with blood. I suppose you never thought, Mrs. MacHendrie, that your husband might kill Mr. Palairet.” She passed her handkerchief around Gavan’s forehead as she spoke, knotting it with fingers at once tender and vindictive. “I canna say, Miss Eppie,” came Mrs. MacHendrie’s muffled voice from the shawl. “The wan’s my ain mon. It juist cam’ ower me, seein’ him a’ bluid.” “Well, you have the satisfaction now of seeing Mr. Palairet a’ bluid.” Eppie tied her knots, and Gavan, submitting a bowed head to her ministrations, still kept his look of cogitating pity upon Mrs. MacHendrie. “You see how your husband has wounded him,” Eppie went on; “the handkerchief is red already. Come on, Gavan; lean on me, please. Let her get her husband home now as best she can.”