He left the porch on the side nearest the furnace, and Gordon saw an active figure glide from the shelter of a flask-shed and go in pursuit.  He followed at a distance.  It was needful only that he should know where to find Farley when Kincaid should have squared his account.

The leisurely chase led the round of the great gates first, and thence through the deserted and ruined coke yard to the foot of the huge slag dump, cold now from the long shut-down.

Tom looked to see Farley turn back from the toe of the dump.  There were no gates on that side of the yard, and consequently no guards.

But the short cut to the office was up the slope of the dump and along the railway track over which the drawings of molten slag were run out to be spilled down the face of the declivity.  There had been no slag-drawing since the new “blow-in” earlier in the day; but while he was watching to keep Farley in sight in the intervals between the gas-flares, Gordon was conscious of the note of preparation behind him:  the slackening of the blast, the rattle and clank of the dinkey locomotive pushing the dumping ladle into place under the furnace lip.

Farley had taken two or three scrambling steps up the rough-seamed declivity when the workmen tapped the furnace.  There was a sputtering roar and the air was filled with coruscating sparks.

Then the stream of molten matter began to pour into the great ladle, a huge eight-foot pot swung on tilting trunnions and mounted on a skeleton flat-car; and for Gordon, standing at the corner of the ore shed with his back to the slag drawers, the red glow picked out the man scrambling up the miniature mountain of cooled scoria,—­this man and another man running swiftly to overtake him.

He looked on coldly until he saw Kincaid head off the retreat and face his adversary.  Instantly there was a spurt of fire from a pistol in Farley’s right hand, a brief flash with the report swallowed up in the roar from the furnace lip.  Then the two men closed and rolled together to the bottom of the slope, and Gordon turned his back.

When he looked again the trampling note of the big blast-engines had quickened to its normal beat, the blow-hole was plugged with its stopper of damp clay, and a red twilight born of the reflection from the surface of the great pot of seething slag had succeeded to the blinding glare.  Where there had been two men locked in struggle there was now only one, and he was lying quietly with one leg doubled under him.  Gordon set his teeth on an angry oath of disappointment.  Had Kincaid broken his compact?

The first long-drawn exhaust of the dinkey engine moving the slag kettle out to its spilling place ripped the silence.  Gordon heard—­and he did not hear:  he was watching the prone figure at the dump’s toe.  When it should rise, he meant to fire from where he stood under the eaves of the ore-shed.  The murder-thought contemplated nothing picturesque or dramatic.  It was merely the dry thirst for the blood of a mortal enemy, as it is wont to be off the stage or out of the pages of the romancers.