looking at each other, the light of an enormous
chance in their eyes, the tragedy of a great stake in their clinched
hands; but the deeper, intenser power was in the face of Dubarre, the
explorer.

There was more than power; malice drew down the brows and curled the
sensitive upper lip. Each man watched the other for knowledge of his own
fate. The glasses lay straggling along the table, emptied of death and
life.

All at once a horrible pallor spread over the face of Villiard, and his
head jerked forward. He grasped the table with both hands, twitching and
trembling. His eyes stared wildly at Dubarre, to whose face the flush of
wine had come, whose look was now maliciously triumphant.

Villiard had drunk both glasses of the poison!

"I win!" Dubarre stood up. Then, leaning over the table towards the
dying man, he added: "You let her die-well! Would you know the truth?
She loved you--always."

Villiard gasped, and his look wandered vaguely along the opposite wall.

Dubarre went on. "I played the game with you honestly, because--because
it was the greatest man could play. And I, too, sinned against her. Now
die! She loved you--murderer!"

The man's look still wandered distractedly along the wall. The sweat of
death was on his face; his lips were moving spasmodically.

Suddenly his look became fixed; he found voice. "Pardon--Jesu!" he
said, and stiffened where he sat. His eyes were fixed on the jewelled
crucifix. Dubarre snatched it from the wall, and hastening to him held
it to his lips: but the warm sparkle of the rubies fell on eyes that
were cold as frosted glass. Dubarre saw that he was dead.

"Because the woman loved him!" he said, gazing curiously at the dead
man.

He turned, went to the door and opened it, for his breath choked him.

All was still on the wooded heights and in the wide valley.

"Because the woman loved him he repented," said Dubarre again with a
half-cynical gentleness as he placed the crucifix on the dead man's
breast.

THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA

The man who died at Alma had a Kilkenny brogue that you could not
cut with a knife, but he was called Kilquhanity, a name as Scotch as
McGregor. Kilquhanity was a retired soldier, on pension, and Pontiac was
a place of peace and poverty. The only gentry were the Cure, the Avocat,
and the young Seigneur, but of the three the only one with a private
income was the young Seigneur.

What should such a common man as Kilquhanity do with