For, perhaps, half a minute the combatants stood thus.

Then, with lowered head and outstretched arms, David rushed in.

Sanderson side-stepped, avoiding the on-set.  Before David could recover himself, the other had sent his left fist crashing into the country-man’s face.

The blow was delivered with all the trained force the athlete possessed and sent David reeling against the rough wall of the house.

Such a blow would have ended the fight then and there for an ordinary man; but it only served to rouse David’s sluggish blood to white heat.

Again he rushed.

This time he was more successful.

True, Sanderson partially succeeded in avoiding the sledge-hammer fist, though it missed his head, it struck glancingly on the left shoulder. numbing for the moment the whole arm.  Sanderson countered as the blow fell, by bringing his right arm up with all his force and striking David on the face.  He sank to his knees, like a wounded bull, but was on his feet again before Sanderson could follow up his advantage.

David, heedless of the pain and fast flowing blood, rushed a third time, catching Sanderson in a corner of the room whence he could not escape.

In an instant, the two were locked in a death-like grip.

To and fro they reeled.  No sound could be heard save the snapping of brands on the hearth, the shuffle of moving feet and the short gasps of struggling men.

In that terrible grasp, Sanderson’s strength was as a child’s.

He could not call into play any of the wrestling tricks that were his, all he could do was to keep his feet and wait for the madman’s strength to expend itself.

The iron grip about his body seemed to slacken for a moment.  He wriggled free, and caught the fatal underhold.

By this new grip, he forced David’s body backward till the larger man’s spine bade fair to snap.

David felt himself caught in a trap.  Exerting all his giant strength he forced one arm down between their close-locked bodies, and clasped his other hand on Sanderson’s face, pushing two fingers into his eyeballs.

No man can endure this torture.  Sanderson loosed his hold.  David had caught him by the right wrist and the left knee, stooping until his own shoulders were under the other’s thigh.  Then, with this leverage, he whirled Sanderson high in the air above his head and threw him with all his force down upon the hearth.

A shower of sparks arose and the strong smell of burning clothes, as Sanderson, stunned and helpless, lay across the blazing fire-place.

For a moment, David thought to leave his vanquished foe to his own fate, then he turned back.  What was the use?  It could not right the wrong he had done to Anna.  He bent over Sanderson, extinguished the fire, pulled the unconscious man to the open door and left him.