The figures paused before one of the dark houses, pointed and laughed; went nearer to the steps and stooped.  He could not hear what they were saying; the voices were hushed in ugly whispers, broken by harsh laughter.  Only now and then he caught a syllable.

“Wake up!” floated out into the silence once.  And again, “No, you don’t, my pretty little chicken!”

Then a girl’s scream pierced the night and something darted out from the darkness of the door-step, eluding the drunken men, but slipped and fell!

Courtland broke into a noiseless run.

The men had scrambled tipsily after the girl and clutched her.  They lifted her unsteadily and surrounded her.  She screamed again, and dashed this way and that blindly, but they met her every time and held her.

Courtland knew, as by a flash, that he had been brought here for this crisis.  It was as if he had heard the words spoken to him, “Now go!” He, lowering his head and crouching, came swiftly forward, watching carefully where he steered, and coming straight at two of the men with his powerful shoulders.  It was an old trick of the football field and it bowled the two assailants on the right straight out into the gutter.  The other three made a dash at him, but he side-stepped one and tripped him; a blow on the point of the chin sent another sprawling on the sidewalk; but the last one, who was perhaps the most sober of them all, showed fight and called to his comrades to come on and get this stranger who was trying to steal their girl.  The language he used made Courtland’s blood boil.  He struck the fellow across his foul mouth, and then clenching with him, went down upon the sidewalk.  His antagonist was a heavier man than he was, but the steady brain and the trained muscles had the better of it from the first, and in a moment more the drunken man was choking and limp.

Courtland rose and looked about.  The two fellows in the gutter were struggling to their feet with loud threats, and the fellow on the sidewalk was staggering toward him.  They would be upon the girl again in a moment.  He looked toward her, as she stood trembling a few feet away from him, too frightened to try to run, not daring to leave her protector.  A street light fell directly upon her white face.  It was Bonnie Brentwood!

With a kick at the man on the ground who was trying to rise, and a lurch at the man on the sidewalk who was coming toward him that sent him spinning again, Courtland dived under the clutching hands of the two in the gutter who couldn’t quite make it to get upon the curb again.  Snatching up the girl like a baby, he fled up the street and around the first corner, and all that cursing, drunken, reeling five came howling after!

CHAPTER XV

Courtland had run three blocks and turned two corners before he dared stop and set the girl upon her feet again.  He looked anxiously at her white face and great, frightened eyes.  Her lips were trembling and she was shivering.  He tore his overcoat off, wrapped it about her, and before she could protest caught her up again and ran on another block or two.