gunman had wanted a better mark a full front face to fire at. He had it now so he blazed away. The bullet struck fair between the trooper's eyes, tearing through to the spine.

But because he had chanced to receive it in that very position, stooping and looking up with his head halfraised, the charge had spared the chamber of the brain, passing along its lower wall. The shock, nevertheless, was terrific.

Sergeant Stout, rightly named, never wavered. Instantaneously, in his first perception of the threat beyond, he had drawn his service Colt. And even as the other's bullet burst through his head, he had sprung erect and fired at the gleam of that one visible eye beyond the door. Now, sliding over to the wall on the right, and so gaining a further view into the room, he covered his adversary with his revolver.

The gunman was in the very motion of firing again, and the Trooper's Colt would have anticipated the shot,

when suddenly the rifle-barrel wavered and dropped as its holder sank forward across the threshold.

Still covering him, the sergeant walked over and looked at the man. He had fainted—or was feigning it. The sergeant, kneeling beside him, saw that he was bleeding from the head. That snap revolver shot had gone true, striking just above the eye and glancing around to the back of the skull. But the soldier's trained touch told him that the wound was slight. Even on the instant the fallen man opened his eyes - began to stir. In another minute he would be all alive again.

The sergeant stood up. In the cool, impersonal way made second nature by the training of the force, he

rapidly weighed the situation. Here was he, Sergeant Stout of the Pennsylvania State Police, at midnight, alone, in the back room of an obscure dwelling in a mean place. He had in his possession two prisoners one handcuffed and cowed, the other for the moment safe by reason of a rapidly passing daze.

If this were all, the situation would be of an extreme simplicity. His second prisoner revived, he would march them both to the waiting trolley and take them back to Unionville jail. But this was not quite all. He, Sergeant Stout, had been shot through the head. His head seemed to be growing bigger, bigger. Blood was pouring down his throat in a steady stream. It would make him sick if he stopped to think of it; and his head was growing bigger-curiously bigger. Presumably, like other persons shot through the head, he would presently die. If he died before he handed these men over into safe keeping, that would be a pity, because they would get away. Further, if he could not maintain sufficient grip on himself to handle prisoner number two, prisoner number two, beyond any doubt, would shortly shoot again. As long, however, as he did keep that grip on himself, just so long prisoner number two was a “prisoner under control." And prisoners under control, by the code of the force, must be protected by their captors. Obviously then, there was just one course for Sergeant Stout to pursue: since he must, beyond question, complete these arrests, and since he must not permit his second captive to make the move that would justify disabling him, he must hang on to his own life and wavering senses long enough to march the two men to that trolley car. It had to be done,

though his head was growing bigger — bigger (surely it must be spreading the skull apart!) — and the thick, choking blood was pouring down his throat.

He kicked the rifle away from the threshold, out of the left-handed gunman's reach. The gunman was moving now-consciousness fully returned. The sergeant, motioning with the point of his Colt, brought him up standing. Then, with another gesture of his revolver too simple to be misunderstood, he indicated to the two the door to the street.

It must have seemed to them like taking orders from a spectre from one of those awful beings through whose charmed substance bullets pass without effect. They looked at him aslant, fearfully. This Presence had been shot through its brain, — there was the mark, — yet it gave no sign of human vulnerability. It was not good — not natural! For the last hour they had been amusing themselves, this well-met pair, in firing at a mark on the kitchen wall. Their bullets had been striking through, into the house next door, arousing a spicy echo of women's screams. With relish they had awaited some attempt at restraint. But they had not expected just this! Scarcely daring to meet each other's eyes, they filed out of the door, into the yard, into the street. Little they guessed how the trooper's head was sailing. "I've got to make it!" said the sergeant to himself, clenching his teeth. And he would not think how many blocks it was to "'s far's we go."

"One block at a time'll do it," he told himself. One block at a time, he was steering them rapidly along, when upon his unsteady hearing broke the sound of footsteps, approaching on the run.

"Another thug to their rescue, maybe!" thought the sergeant and the idea pulled him together with a jerk. As the footsteps rang close, he held himself braced for an onset. They neared the corner ahead, his Colt waited ready, but the flying figure, rounding under the street lamp, showed, heaven be praised! the uniform of the Pennsylvania State Police.

Trooper Lithgow, returning to the sub-station from detached duty, and passing through the town of Republic, had learned from the waiting trolley men of his sergeant's presence, with some hint of the errand which had brought him there. Thinking that help might not be amiss, he had started out to join his officer, and was hastening along the way, when the sound of the two shots, distinct on the midnight silence, had turned his stride to a run.

Together they walked to the trolley, herding the prisoners before them. Together they rode to Unionville, with the prisoners between them. From time to time the two trolley men looked at Sergeant Stout, with the bleeding hole between his eyes, then looked at each other, and said nothing. Very rarely Trooper Lithgow looked at Sergeant Stout, then at the trolley men, but said nothing. A proud man he was that night. But he did not want those trolley men to know it. He wanted them to see and to understand for all time that this thing was a matter of course that you could n't down an officer of the Pennsylvania State Police on duty.

They got their two prisoners jailed. Then they walked over to the hospital (the last lift of the way up the hospital hill, Lithgow lent a steadying arm) and there, in the doctor's presence, Sergeant Stout gently collapsed.

"I'm glad you came, Lithgow. But you see I could have fetched it!" he said, with the makings of a grin, just before he went over.

There were four days when he might have died. Then his own nature laid hold on him and lifted him back again into the world of sunshine. "It's one of those super-cures effected by pure optimism. The man expected to get well," the surgeon said.

But they dared not cut for the bullet: it lay too close to the spinal cord. And so First Sergeant Stout, when his head gets stuck fast, has yet to take it in his two hands and shift it free again. Still, with a head as steady as that, what does it matter?