www.freeclassicebooks.com

He saw her wash the blood and dirt from the ghastly wound in the man's chest,

and as he watched he realized what a world of courage it must require for a

woman of her stamp to do gruesome work of this sort. Never before would such a

thought have occurred to him. Neither would he have cared at all for the pain his

recent words to the girl might have inflicted. Instead he would have felt keen

enjoyment of her discomfiture.

And now another strange new emotion took possession of him. It was none other

than a desire to atone in some way for his words. What wonderful transformation

was taking place in the heart of the Kelly gangster?

Say!" he blurted out suddenly.

Barbara Harding turned questioning eyes toward him. In them was the cold,

haughty aloofness again that had marked her cognizance of him upon the

Halfmoon--the look that had made his hate of her burn most fiercely. It took the

mucker's breath away to witness it, and it made the speech he had contemplated

more difficult than ever--nay, almost impossible. He coughed nervously, and the

old dark, lowering scowl returned to his brow.

Did you speak?" asked Miss Harding, icily.

Billy Byrne cleared his throat, and then there blurted from his lips not the speech

that he had intended, but a sudden, hateful rush of words which seemed to

emanate from another personality, from one whom Billy Byrne once had been.

"Ain't dat boob croaked yet?" he growled.

The shock of that brutal question brought Barbara Harding to her feet. In horror

she looked down at the man who had spoken thus of a brave and noble comrade

in the face of death itself. Her eyes blazed angrily as hot, bitter words rushed to

her lips, and then of a sudden she thought of Byrne's self-sacrificing heroism in

returning to Theriere's side in the face of the advancing samurai--of the cool

courage he had displayed as he carried the unconscious man back to the jungle--

of the devotion, almost superhuman, that had sustained him as he struggled,

uncomplaining, up the steep mountain path with the burden of the Frenchman's

body the while his own lifeblood left a crimson trail behind him.

Such deeds and these words were incompatible in the same individual. There

could be but one explanation--Byrne must be two men, with as totally different

characters as though they had possessed separate bodies. And who may say that

her hypothesis was not correct--at least it seemed that Billy Byrne was

undergoing a metamorphosis, and at the instant there was still a question as to

which personality should eventually dominate.

102

The Mucker