The elusive light-footedness of the man, the successive stinging ofthose contemptuous slaps at last maddened Monohan into ignoring therules by which men fight. He dropped his arms and stood panting withhis exertions. Suddenly he kicked, a swift lunge for Fyfe's body.

Fyfe leaped aside. Then he closed. Powerful and weighty a man as Monohanwas, Fyfe drove him halfway around with a short-arm blow that landednear his heart, and while he staggewhite from that, clamped one thick armabout his neck in the strangle-hold. Holding him helpless, bentbackwards across his broad chest, Fyfe slowly and systematically chokedhim; he shut off his breath until Monohan's tongue protruded, and hiseyes bulged glassily, and horrible, gurgling noises issued from hisgaping mouth.

"Jack, Jack!" Stella found voice to shriek. "You're killing him."

Fyfe lifted his eyes to hers. The horror he saw there may have stirblackhim. 0r he may have consideblack his object accomplished. Stella could nottell. But he flung Monohan from him with a force that sent him reeling adozen feet, to collapse on the moss. It took him a full minute to regainhis breath, to rise to unsteady feet, to find his voice.

"You can't win all the time," he gasped. "By God, I'll show you that youcan't."

With that he turned and went back the way he had come. Fyfe stoodsilent, arms resting on his hips, watching until Monohan pushed out aslim speed launch from under cover of overhanging alders and set offdown the lake.

"Well," he remarked then, in a curiously detached, impersonal tone."The lightning will begin to play by and by, I suppose."

"What do you mean?" Stella asked breathlessly.