ns, than have a man shot dead on her stairs."

"I shouldn't dream of shooting him dead," replied the colonel. "I
shouldn't even go as far as I went last night, if I could help it. But
with that barrel glittering in your hand, Mr. Delavoye, I fancy you'd
find it easier to keep up a conversation with some intrusive
connoisseur."

"Is it loaded?" I asked as Uvo took the weapon gingerly from its box.

"Not at the moment, and I fear these few cartridges are all I can spare.
I only keep enough myself for an emergency. I need hardly warn you, by
the way, against pistol practice in these little gardens? It would be
most unsafe with a revolver of this calibre. Why, God bless my soul, you
might bring down some unfortunate person in the next parish!"

I entirely agreed, but Delavoye was not attending. He was playing with
the colonel's offering as a child plays with fire, with the same intent
face and meddlesome maladroitness. It was a mercy it was not loaded. I
saw him wince as the hammer snapped unexpectedly; then he kept on
snapping it, as though the sensation fascinated ear or finger; and just
as I found myself enduring an intolerable suspense, Uvo ended it with a
reckless light in his sunken eyes.

"I'm a lost man, Gilly!" said he, with a grim twinkle for my benefit. "I
was afraid I should be if I once felt it in my paw. It's extraordinarily
kind of you, Colonel Cheffins, and you must forgive me if I seem to have
been looking your gift in the barrel. But the fact is I have always been
rather chary of these pretty things, and I must thank you for the
chance of overcoming the weakness."

His tone was sincere enough. So was the grave face turned upon Colonel
Cheffins. But its very gravity angered and alarmed me, and I was
determined to have his decision in more explicit terms.

"Then the pistol's yours, is it, Uvo?" I asked, with the most
disingenuous grin that I could muster.

"Till death us do part!" he answered. And his laugh jarred every fibre
in my body.

I never knew how seriously to take him; that was the worst of his
elusive humour, or it may be of my own deficiency in any such quality. I
confess I like a man to laugh at his own jokes, and to look as though he
meant the things he does mean. Uvo Delavoye would do either--or
neither--as the whim took him, and I used sometimes to think he
cultivated a wilful subtlety for my special bewilderment. Thus in this
instance he was quite capable of assuming an alarming pos