"Ah! You are recovering already. But before you start active exercise take your overcoat off. That revolver in the breast pocket might go off accidentally, you know. Besides, as I shall hit back, I might fetch my knuckles against it, and that would be hardly fair. Otherwise, I can do as much in the punching line as you can, any day."

This reply utterly disconcerted Mensmore. "Look here," he said, avoiding Bruce's steadfast gaze, "what are you talking about? What has it got to do with you, anyhow?"

"Oh, a great deal. My business principally consists in looking after other people's affairs. Just now it is my definite intention to prevent you from blowing out your brains, or what passes for them."

"Then all I can say is that I wish you were in Jericho. It is your own fault if you get into trouble over this matter. Had you gone about your business I would have waited. As it is--"

It so happened that the guard, having nothing better to do, strolled along the terraces by the same path that Mensmore and Bruce had followed. The first sight that met his astonished eyes, when in the flood of moonlight he discovered their identity, was the spectacle of these two springing at each other like a pair of wild cats.

"_Parbleu_," he shouted, "the solitary ones are fighting!"

He ran forward, drawing his short sword, ready to stick the weapon into either of the combatants if the majesty of the law in his own person were not at once respected.

In reality, the affair was simple enough. Mensmore made an ineffectual attempt to draw his revolver, and Bruce pinioned him before he could get his hand up to his pocket. Both men were equally matched, and it was difficult to say how the struggle might have ended had not the sword-brandishing guard appeared on the scene.

Claude, even in this excited situation, kept his senses. Mensmore, blind with rage and the madness of one who would voluntarily plunge into the Valley of the Shadow, took heed of naught save the effort to rid himself of the restraining clutch.

"Put away your sword. Seize his arms from behind. He is a suicide," shouted the barrister to the gesticulating and shrieking Frenchman.

Fortunately, Bruce was an excellent linguist. The man caught Mensmore's arms, put a knee in the small of his back, and doubled him backwards with a force that nearly 

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