Crozier nodded. "Well, that would be appropriate, Mrs. Tynan, but it
wouldn't cleanse him. He is the original leopard whose spots are there
for ever."
By this time Burlingame was on his feet, and a look of craft and fear and
ugly meaning was in his face. Morally he was a coward, physically he was
a coward, but he had in his pocket a weapon which gave him a feeling
of superiority in the situation; and after a night of extreme self-
indulgence he was in a state of irritation of the nerves which gave
him what the searchers after excuses for ungoverned instincts and acts
call "brain-storms." He had had sense enough to know that his amorous
escapades would get him into trouble one day, and he had always carried
the little pistol which was now so convenient to his hand. It gave him a
fictitious courage which he would not have had unarmed against almost any
man--or woman--in Askatoon.
"You get a woman to do your fighting for you," he said hatefully. "You
have to drag her in. It was you I meant to challenge, not the poor girl
young enough to be your daughter." His hand went to his waistcoat
pocket. Crozier saw and understood.
Suddenly Crozier's eyes blazed. The abnormal in him--the Celtic strain
always at variance with the normal, an almost ultra-natural attendant of
it awoke like a tempest in the tropics.
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