“Ain’t Doctor McTeague just that strong!”

Marcus heard it, and his fury came instantly to a head.  Rage at his defeat at the hands of the dentist and before Selina’s eyes, the hate he still bore his old-time “pal” and the impotent wrath of his own powerlessness were suddenly unleashed.

“God damn you! get off of me,” he cried under his breath, spitting the words as a snake spits its venom.  The little audience uttered a cry.  With the oath Marcus had twisted his head and had bitten through the lobe of the dentist’s ear.  There was a sudden flash of bright-red blood.

Then followed a terrible scene.  The brute that in McTeague lay so close to the surface leaped instantly to life, monstrous, not to be resisted.  He sprang to his feet with a shrill and meaningless clamor, totally unlike the ordinary bass of his speaking tones.  It was the hideous yelling of a hurt beast, the squealing of a wounded elephant.  He framed no words; in the rush of high-pitched sound that issued from his wide-open mouth there was nothing articulate.  It was something no longer human; it was rather an echo from the jungle.

Sluggish enough and slow to anger on ordinary occasions, McTeague when finally aroused became another man.  His rage was a kind of obsession, an evil mania, the drunkenness of passion, the exalted and perverted fury of the Berserker, blind and deaf, a thing insensate.

As he rose he caught Marcus’s wrist in both his hands.  He did not strike, he did not know what he was doing.  His only idea was to batter the life out of the man before him, to crush and annihilate him upon the instant.  Gripping his enemy in his enormous hands, hard and knotted, and covered with a stiff fell of yellow hair—­the hands of the old-time car-boy—­he swung him wide, as a hammer-thrower swings his hammer.  Marcus’s feet flipped from the ground, he spun through the air about McTeague as helpless as a bundle of clothes.  All at once there was a sharp snap, almost like the report of a small pistol.  Then Marcus rolled over and over upon the ground as McTeague released his grip; his arm, the one the dentist had seized, bending suddenly, as though a third joint had formed between wrist and elbow.  The arm was broken.

But by this time every one was crying out at once.  Heise and Ryan ran in between the two men.  Selina turned her head away.  Trina was wringing her hands and crying in an agony of dread: 

“Oh, stop them, stop them!  Don’t let them fight.  Oh, it’s too awful.”

“Here, here, Doc, quit.  Don’t make a fool of yourself,” cried Heise, clinging to the dentist.  “That’s enough now.  Listen to me, will you?”

“Oh, Mac, Mac,” cried Trina, running to her husband.  “Mac, dear, listen; it’s me, it’s Trina, look at me, you——­”

“Get hold of his other arm, will you, Ryer?” panted Heise.  “Quick!”

“Mac, Mac,” cried Trina, her arms about his neck.