put his keys back in his
pocket, before losing my head and doing all the rest that the police saw
through at a glance. Sit still, Langholm! I am getting the cart before
the horse. I was not so guilty as you think. They may hang me if they
like, but it was as much his act as mine.

"He stood with his back to me, fiddling with the revolvers for a good
five minutes, during which time I heard him tear his handkerchief in
two, and wondered what in the world he was going to do next. What he did
was to turn round and go on fiddling with the pistols behind his back.
Then he held out one in each hand by the barrel, telling me to take my
choice, that he didn't know which was which himself, but only one of
them was loaded. And he had lapped the two halves of his handkerchief
round the chambers of each in such a way that neither of us could tell
when we were going to fire.

"Then he tossed for first shot, and made me call, and I won. So he sat
down in his chair and finished his drink, and told me to blaze across at
him from where I sat in the other chair. I tried to get out of it,
partly because I seemed to have seen more good in Minchin in those last
ten minutes than in all the months that I had known him; he might be a
brute, but he was a British brute, and all right about fair play.
Besides, for the moment, it was difficult to believe he was serious, or
even very angry. But I, on my side, was more in a dream than not, or he
would not have managed me as he did. He broke out again, cursed me and
his wife, and swore that he would shoot her too if I didn't go through
with it. You can't think of the things he was saying when--but I
believe he said them on purpose to make me. Anyhow I pulled at last, but
there was only a click, and he answered with another like lightning.
That showed me how he meant it, plainer than anything else. It was too
late to get out. I set my teeth and pulled again ..."

"Like the clash of swords," whispered Langholm, in the pause.

Severino moved his head from side to side upon the pillow.

"No, not that time, Langholm. There was such a report as might have
roused the neighborhood--you would have thought--but I forgot to tell
you he had shut the window and run up some shutters, and even drawn the
curtains, to do for the other houses what the double doors did for his
own. When the smoke lifted, he was lying back in his chair as though he
had fallen asleep ...

"I think the worst was waiting for her to co