“Don’t shoot him!  Shoot in the air!” he shrieked.  He seized the Jew by the shoulders.

“You damned hound,” he roared, hissing in his face.  “So I’ve got you at last.  That’s where your vacuum is, is it?  I know your vile hiding-place at last.”  He shook him like a dog.  “I’ve been after him all night,” he cried, turning to Shorthouse, “all night, I tell you, and I’ve got him at last.”

Garvey lifted his upper lip as he spoke and showed his teeth.  They shone like the fangs of a wolf.  The Jew evidently saw them too, for he gave a horrid yell and struggled furiously.

Before the eyes of the secretary a mist seemed to rise.  The hideous shadow again leaped into Garvey’s face.  He foresaw a dreadful battle, and covering the two men with his pistol he retreated slowly to the door.  Whether they were both mad, or both criminal, he did not pause to inquire.  The only thought present in his mind was that the sooner he made his escape the better.

Garvey was still shaking the Jew when he reached the door and turned the key, but as he passed out on to the landing both men stopped their struggling and turned to face him.  Garvey’s face, bestial, loathsome, livid with anger; the Jew’s white and grey with fear and horror;—­both turned towards him and joined in a wild, horrible yell that woke the echoes of the night.  The next second they were after him at full speed.

Shorthouse slammed the door in their faces and was at the foot of the stairs, crouching in the shadow, before they were out upon the landing.  They tore shrieking down the stairs and past him, into the hall; and, wholly unnoticed, Shorthouse whipped up the stairs again, crossed the bedroom and dropped from the balcony into the soft snow.

As he ran down the drive he heard behind him in the house the yells of the maniacs; and when he reached home several hours later Mr. Sidebotham not only raised his salary but also told him to buy a new hat and overcoat, and send in the bill to him.

SKELETON LAKE:  AN EPISODE IN CAMP

The utter loneliness of our moose-camp on Skeleton Lake had impressed us from the beginning—­in the Quebec backwoods, five days by trail and canoe from civilisation—­and perhaps the singular name contributed a little to the sensation of eeriness that made itself felt in the camp circle when once the sun was down and the late October mists began rising from the lake and winding their way in among the tree trunks.

For, in these regions, all names of lakes and hills and islands have their origin in some actual event, taking either the name of a chief participant, such as Smith’s Ridge, or claiming a place in the map by perpetuating some special feature of the journey or the scenery, such as Long Island, Deep Rapids, or Rainy Lake.

All names thus have their meaning and are usually pretty recently acquired, while the majority are self-explanatory and suggest human and pioneer relations.  Skeleton Lake, therefore, was a name full of suggestion, and though none of us knew the origin or the story of its birth, we all were conscious of a certain lugubrious atmosphere that haunted its shores and islands, and but for the evidences of recent moose tracks in its neighbourhood we should probably have pitched our tents elsewhere.