it had once caught the unassailed eye of the officer, and was the next moment clutched in his grasp.  He raised it with a determination, inspired by the agony he endured, at once to liberate himself and to avenge his father’s murder, but the idea that there was something assassin-like in the act as suddenly arrested him, and ere he had time to obey a fresh impulse of his agony, the knife was forcibly stricken from his hand.  A laugh of triumph burst from the lips of the half intoxicated Desborough, but it was scarcely uttered before it was succeeded by a yell of pain, and the hand that had contrived to entwine itself, with resistless force and terrible intent, in the waving hair of the youth, fell suddenly from its grasp, enabling its victim at length to free himself altogether and start once more to his feet.

Little more than a minute had been passed in the enactment of this strange scene.  The collision, the overthrow, the upraising of the knife had followed each other in such rapid succession that, until the last desperate intention of Gerald was formed, the Aid-de-Camp had not had time to interpose himself in any way between the enraged combatants.  His first action had been to strike away the murderous knife with the heavy butt of one of his pistols, the other to plant such a blow upon the “gouging” hand of the settler from the same butt, as effectually to compel him to relinquish his ferocious clutch.  In both objects, as we have seen, he fully succeeded.

But although his right hand had been utterly disabled by the blow from Jackson’s pistol, the fury of Desborough, fed as it was by the fumes of the liquor he had swallowed, was too great to render him heedful of aught but the gratification of his vengeance.  Rolling rapidly over to the point where the knife had fallen he secured it in his left hand, and then, leaping nimbly to his feet, gathered himself into a spring upon his unarmed but watchful enemy.  But before the bound could be taken, the active Aid-de-Camp, covering Gerald with his body and presenting a cocked pistol, had again thwarted him in his intention.

“I say now, old cock, you’d much better be quiet I guess, for them sort of tantrums won’t suit me.  If this here Liftenant killed your son why he’ll answer for it later, but I can’t let you murder my prisoner in that flumgustious manner.  I’m responsible for him to the United States Government, therefore just drop that knife clean and slick upon the floor, and let’s have no more of this nonsense for the night.”

But even the cocked pistol had not power to restrain the fierce—­almost brutal—­rage of the settler, whose growing intoxication added fuel to the fire which the presence of his enemy had kindled in his heart.  Heedless of the determined air and threatening posture of the Aid-de-Camp, he made a bound forward, uttering a sound that resembled the roar of a wild beast rather than the cry of a human being, and struck over Jackson’s shoulder at