the
decision was unnecessary? There was not in his mind the slightest
feeling of personal elation at the prospect, but rather a sense of
injury that such a scurvy trick should be foisted off upon him. It
was like going to a funeral and being confronted, suddenly, with the
grinning head of the supposed dead projecting through the coffin lid.
It was unseemly!

Only a minute more: a half now--yes, he would win. For the first time
he felt that his forehead was wet, and he mopped his face with his
handkerchief jerkily; then sank back in the chair, instinctively
shooting forward his cuffs in motion habitual.

"Fifteen seconds." There could be no question now of the result; and
the outside world, banished for the once, returned. The blacksmith was
hammering again, the strokes two seconds apart, and the fancy seized
the little man to finish counting by the ring of the anvil.

"Twelve, ten, eight," he counted slowly. "Six" was forming on the tip
of the tongue when of a sudden the tiny flame veered far over toward
the holder, sputtered and went out. For the first time in those
interminable minutes, Arnold looked at his companion. Ichabod's face
was within a foot of the table, and in line with the direction the
flame had veered. Swift as thought the small man was on his feet,
white anger in his face.

"You blew that candle!" he challenged.

Ichabod's head dropped into his hands. An awful horror of himself fell
crushingly upon him; an abhorrence of the selfishness that could have
forgotten--what he forgot; and for so long,--almost irrevocably long.
Mingled with this feeling was a sudden thanksgiving for the boon of
which he was unworthy; the memory at the eleventh hour, in time to do
as he had done before his word was passed. Arnold strode across the
room, his breath coming fast, his eyes flashing fire. He shook the
tall man by the shoulder roughly.

"You blew that flame, I say!"

Ichabod looked up at the furious, dark face almost in surprise.

"Yes, I blew it," he corroborated absently.

"It would have burned longer."

"Perhaps--I don't know."

Arnold moved back a step and the old smile, mocking, maddening, spread
over his face; tilting, perpendicular, the tips of the big
moustaches.

"After all--" very slowly--"after all, then, you're a coward."

The tall man stood up; six-feet-two, long, bony, immovable: Ichabod
himself again.

"You know that's a lie."

"You'll meet me again,--another way, then?"

"No, ne