Skilled, watchful, dangerous, that old training saved him.  Every time Jan came to his feet, roaring, thrashing his arms like flails, making head-long, bull-like rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him sprawling again.  Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath.  Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down.  And presently using every wrestler’s trick that he knew, and bringing to bear every ounce of his saved and superb strength, in a most orderly, businesslike, cold-blooded manner he proceeded to pound Big Jan into pulp.  The devil that had been chained these seven years was a-loose at last, rampant, fully aroused, and not easily satisfied.  Besides, had not Jan most brutally and wantonly tried to kill Kerry!

If it was a well deserved it was none the less a most drastic punishment, and when it was over Big Jan lay still.  He would lie prone for many a day, and he would carry marks of it to his grave.

When the tousled victor, with a reeling head, an eye fast closing, and a puffed and swollen lip, staggered upright and stood swaying on his feet, he found himself surrounded by a great quiet ring of men and women who regarded him with eyes of wonder and amaze.  He was superhuman; he had accomplished the impossible; paid the dreaded Boss in his own coin, yea, given him full measure to the running over thereof!  No man of all the men Jan had beaten in his time had received such as Jan himself had gotten at this man’s hands to-day.  The reign of the Boss was over:  and the conqueror was a crippled man!  A great sighing breath of sheer worshipful admiration went up; they were too profoundly moved to cheer him; they could only stand and stare.  When they wished, reverently, to help him, he waved them aside.

“Where’s my dog?” he demanded thickly through his swollen lips.  “Where’s Kerry?  If he’s dead—­” he cast upon fallen Jan a menacing glare.

“Your dog’s in bed with the baby, and Ma’s give him milk with brandy in it, and he drank it and growled at her, and the boys is holding him down now to keep him from coming out to you, and he ain’t much hurt nohow,” squealed one of Michael’s big-eyed children.

John Flint, stretching his arms above his head, drew in a great gulping mouthful of air, exhaled it, and laughed a deepchested, satisfied laugh, for all he was staggering like a drunken man.  Here Michael’s wife Katya came puffing out of her house like a traction engine—­such was the shape in which nature formed her—­and falling on her knees, caught his hand to her vast bosom, weeping like the overflowing of a river and blubbering uncouth sounds.

“Get up, you crazy woman!” snarled John Flint, his face going brick-red.  “Stop licking my hand, and get up!” Although he did not know it, Katya symbolized the mental attitude of every laborer in Appleboro toward him from that hour.