stepped up, and, with an air of reckless
indifference, plunged his arm into the opening!

CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT.

THE LOTTERY OF LIFE AND DEATH.

One by one the buttons were drawn forth from the bag,--each man, as he
drew his, exhibiting it in his open palm, to satisfy the others as to
its colour, and then placing it in a common receptacle,--against the
contingency of its being required again for another like lottery!

Solemn as was the character of the ceremony, it was not conducted either
in solemnity or silence. Many of the wretches even jested while it was
in progress; and a stranger to the dread conditions under which the
drawing was being made might have supposed it a raffle for some trifling
prize!

The faces of a few, however, would have contradicted this supposition.
A few there were who approached the oracle with cowed and craven looks;
and their trembling fingers, as they inserted them into the bag,
proclaimed an apprehension stronger than could have arisen from any mere
courting of chance in an ordinary casting of lots.

Those men who were noisiest and most gleeful _after_ they had drawn were
the ones who before it had shown the strongest signs of fear, and who
trembled most while performing the operation.

Some of them could not conceal even their demoniac joy at having drawn
blank, but danced about over the raft as if they had suddenly succeeded
to some splendid fortune.

The difference between this singular lottery and most others, was that
the blanks were the prizes,--the prize itself being the true blank,--the
ending of existence.

Le Gros continued to hold the bag, and with an air of nonchalance;
though anyone closely observing his countenance could tell that it was
assumed. As had been already proved, the French bully was at heart a
coward. Under the influence of angry passion, or excited by a desire
for revenge, he could show fight, and even fling himself into positions
of danger; but in a contest such as that in which he was now engaged a
cool strife, in which Fortune was his only antagonist, and in which he
could derive no advantage from any unfair subterfuge, his artificial
courage had entirely forsaken him.

So long as the lottery was in its earlier stages, and only a few buttons
had been taken out of the bag, he preserved his assumed air of
indifference. There were still many chances of life against that one of
death,--nearly twenty to one. As the drawing proceeded, however, a