At the corner he paused again; he had no plan, he was drifting along physically just as he was morally, following the line of least resistance, which line, just then, was marked by the lights along Market Place. He started across that way, when all at once a hand took him by the lapel of his coat and Kouka’s black visage was before him. Archie looked at the detective, whose eyes were piercing him from beneath the surly brows that met in thick, coarse, bristling hairs across the wide bridge of his nose. "Well," said Kouka, "so I’ve got you again!" Archie’s heart came to his throat. A great rage suddenly seized him, a hatred of Kouka, and of his black eyes; he had a savage wish to grind the heel of his boot heavily, viciously, remorselessly into that face, right there where the eyebrows met across the nose--grinding his heel deep, feeling the bones crunch beneath it. For some reason Kouka suddenly released his hold. "You’d better duck out o’ here, young fellow," Kouka was saying. "You hear?" Archie heard, but it was a moment before he could fully realize that Kouka knew nothing after all. "You hear?" Kouka repeated, bringing his face close to Archie’s. "Yes, I hear," said Archie sullenly, as it seemed, but thankfully. "Don’t let me see you around any more, you--" Archie, saved by some instinct, did not reply, and he did not wait for Kouka’s oath, but hurried away, and Kouka, as he could easily feel, stood watching him. He went on half a block and paused in a shadow. He saw Kouka still standing there, then presently saw him turn and go away. Archie paused in the shadow; he thought of Kouka, remembering all the detective had done to him; he remembered those forty days in the workhouse; he thought of Bostwick, of the city attorney, of the whole town that seemed to stand behind him; the bitterness of those days in the workhouse came back, and the force of all the accumulated hatred and vengeance that had been spent upon him was doubled and quadrupled in his heart, and he stood there with black, mad, insane thoughts clouding his reason. Then he gripped his roll of money, he pressed his new revolver, and he felt a kind of wild, primitive, savage satisfaction,--the same primitive satisfaction that Kouka, and Bostwick, the city attorney, the whole police force, and the whole city had seemed to take in sending him to the workhouse. And then he went on toward the tenderloin. III