The two
men on the floor stiffened grotesquely and the idiot crouched in a
corner, whimpering.
David passed his hand across his brow; then he bent and grasped the
mail bag. He was still pausing when the remaining Hatburn strode into
the kitchen. The latter whispered a sharp oath. David shifted the bag;
but the elder had him before he could bring the revolver up. A
battering blow fell, knocked the pistol clattering over the floor, and
David instinctively clutched the other's wrist.
The blows multiplied, beating David into a daze, through which a single
realization persisted--he must not lose his grip upon the arm that was
swinging him about the room, knocking over chairs, crashing against the
table, even drawing him across the hot iron of the stove. He must hold
on!
He saw the face above him dimly through the deepening mist; it seemed
demoniacal, inhuman, reaching up to the ceiling--a yellow giant bent on
his destruction....
His mother, years ago, lives away, had read to them--to his father and
Allen and himself--about a giant, a giant and David; and in the end----
He lost all sense of the entity of the man striving to break him
against the wooden angles of the room; he had been caught, was
twisting, in a great storm; a storm with thunder and cruel flashes of
lightning; a storm hammering and hammering at him.... Must not lose his
hold on--on life! He must stay fast against everything! It wasn't his
hand gripping the destructive force towering above him, but a strange
quality within him, at once within him and aside, burning in his heart
and directing him from without.
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