The demoniac sprang upon the table and seized a heavy chair, which he whirled around his head, threatening all who approached.
Ran and Longman sprang upon the table and threw themselves upon him.
It was at this moment that John Legg, startled by the screams of the women, entered the drawing-room, through the side door leading from the hall.
Yes, it was pandemonium that met the horror-stricken eyes of the man. Can I possibly show you the scene as he beheld it?
As he stood in the doorway, on his left, near the bay window in the upper end of the room, high on the table stood the athletic form of the demoniac, raging and foaming, cursing and threatening in the frenzy of mania a potu, swinging aloft the heavy chair which he whirled around his head with the swiftness and velocity of a windmill. On the same table stood Samson Longman and Randolph Hay, struggling to master the maniac, who seemed possessed of the strength of seven devils.
On the floor, near the middle of the room, lay Michael Man, stunned by a wound in his head, prostrate and insensible. Near him were scattered the fragments of the astral lamp that had evidently been the instrument by which his skull had been fractured. Beside him sat Judith Hay, with his wounded head on her lap. She was weeping and wailing, giving full vent to her grief and horror after the manner of her warm-hearted, impulsive race. Beside him on the opposite side knelt the Rev. Mr. Campbell, with a bowl of water and a napkin, washing the blood from the cut.
Away back in the lower end of the long room, on a shady sofa, sat Mrs. Campbell and her daughter, Jennie Montgomery, clasped in each other’s arms, with their heads hidden on each other’s shoulders, too much shocked, horror-stricken, terrified to help, to speak or even to move. From under the same sofa peered the pallid face and staring eyes of Dandy Quin, who had evidently sought that lowly refuge “as the safest place at the crack of doom” for a poor little old man.
Neither Clay Legg nor Will Walling were to be seen anywhere.
All this, which has required some time to describe, was taken in at one view by John Legg. And for one instant he stood in doubt where first to offer help; whether to jump—but no; honest John’s jumping days were over—whether to scramble up on the table and help to subdue the maniac possessed of a legion of devils, or to kneel down by the side of the minister to serve if he could the wounded man. In another moment the doubt was decided for him.
Ran succeeded in getting both his hands around the throat of the demoniac, which he held as in the grip of death, while Longman wrenched and twisted the heavy, murderous missile from his hands and dropped it on the floor and then closed with him in a conquering clasp. But it took all his strength, as well as all of Ran’s, to hold the infuriate, now that his arms were free.