Mart turned from the door.  His eyes glittered.  He advanced upon her hungrily like a huge cat upon an enchanted mouse.

“So you thought you’d yelp on me, did you?” he snarled, licking his lips.  “Thought you’d put me away, didn’t you?  Get me behind the bars, eh?”

“Blood!” moaned the old woman in the corner.  “Blood!”

Mart strode to the table, pulling out from the bosom of his shirt a lumpy package wrapped in his handkerchief.  He threw it down on the table.  It fell heavily with a sharp ringing of coins.

“But I fooled you this time!  Mart wasn’t so dull this time, eh?” He turned toward her again.

Between them, disturbed in his resting-place on the table, the big bruised yellow butterfly raised himself on his sweeping wings.

Mart drew back a little.  The butterfly flew toward Olga and brushed her face with a velvety softness.

Then Brenner lurched toward her, his face black with fury, his arm upraised.  She stood still, looking at him with wide eyes in which a gleam of light showed.

“You devil!” she said, in a whispering voice.  “You killed that man!  You gave Tobey the watch and the axe!  You changed shoes with him!  You devil!  You devil!”

He drew back for a blow.  She did not move.  Instead she mocked him, trying to smile.

“You whelp!” she taunted him.  “Go on and hit me!  I ain’t running!  And if you don’t break me to bits I’m going to the sheriff and I’ll tell him what you said to me just now.  And he’ll wonder how you got all that money in your pockets.  He knows we’re as poor as church mice.  How you going to explain what you got?”

“I ain’t going to be such a fool as to keep it on me!” Mart crowed with venomous mirth.  “You nor the sheriff nor any one won’t find it where I’m going to put it!”

The broken woman leaned forward, baiting him.  The strange look of exaltation and sacrifice burned in her faded eyes.  “I’ve got you, Mart!” she jeered.  “You’re going to swing yet!  I’ll even up with you for Tobey!  You didn’t think I could do it, did you?  I’ll show you!  You’re trapped, I tell you!  And I done it!”

She watched Mart swing around to search the room and the blank window with apprehensive eyes.  She sensed his eerie dread of the unseen.  He couldn’t see any one.  He couldn’t hear a sound.  She saw that he was wet with the cold perspiration of fear.  It would enrage him.  She counted on that.  He turned back to his wife in a white fury.  She leaned toward him, inviting his blows as martyrs welcome the torch that will make their pile of fagots a blazing bier.

He struck her.  Once.  Twice.  A rain of blows given in a blind passion that drove her to her knees, but she clung stubbornly, with rigid fingers to the table-edge.  Although she was dazed she retained consciousness by a sharp effort of her failing will.  She had not yet achieved that for which she was fighting.