"We are square," said McDowell, curtly. "You have your deeds for that ground—all put into the settlement at a fair value. I have paid your interest as it came due, and shall go on doing so. The principal the same. I'm all right; what is it you want? Try the courts, if you think you can reach me."
"I shall reach you."
"I wonder how?"
Ogden lifted his hand from the chair to his forehead, across which he passed it once or twice. McDowell gave him an amused smile.
"You have robbed me," Ogden said; "you have disgraced me; you have brought me to the edge of ruin. You took advantage of my trust, my inexperience, my strangeness to the city. You have stripped us all, and you have used my sister for a shield. You knew we would stand everything for her, and we have stood everything. You have acted like a sneak and a coward."
McDowell's eyes dropped to his desk. But no flush mounted to his face; that would have been a physical and a moral impossibility. He looked up again after a moment.
"You will reach me? I wonder how?"
Ogden, for the first time in his life, passed completely out of himself. There fell away from him all the fetters that shackle the super-civilized man who is habitually conscious of his civilization.
"Like this."
He seized the chair, raised it over McDowell's head, and went out, leaving the man crushed and bleeding on the floor.