mned
Gypsy? Give him the stick!"

The player let go a stage laugh. Hugh took a step forward with a grave
show of self-command hardly justified. "Mr. Hayle," he said, "you don't
want to be another 'hopeless ass,' do you?"

"Gawd!" Julian rose to his toes and lifted and brought down his cane.
But it never reached its mark. One stride of the actor, one outflash of
arm and staff, foiled the blow, and when a second was turned on him the
cane flew from Julian's hand he knew not how and dropped ten feet away.

He dared not leap after it but faced the skilled fencer, blazing
defiance though fully expectant of the unsheathed dirk. But no dirk was
unsheathed. Lucian, forgetting his feebleness, sprang for the cane and
had dropped to one knee to snatch it up when Hugh set foot on it.

"No!" said Hugh. The convalescent straightened up, his brow dark with an
anguish of chagrin, and before he could find speech Hugh was adding:
"Wait. I'll give it to you."

"Don't!" cried Gilmore. "Keep it!"

"No," wearily said Hugh, glaring on the glaring twins, "we're all
belittled enough now." He caught up the cane, drew its dagger, snapped
it in half on the deck, and resheathed the stump. Then tossing the point
into the river he said: "Here, Mr. Gilmore, swap."

With an actor's relish for a scene the actor swapped, and the
convalescent wept with rage as Hugh, having treated the second cane like
the first, tendered it to him.

"Don't take it!" cried his brother; "don't touch it!" And then to
Gilmore: "Don't you hand me that one, either! Don't you dare!"

Yet thereupon the actor dared, saying: "But for--others--I'd trounce you
with it like a schoolmaster."

The words were half drowned by Lucian, who snatched from Hugh the cane
he tendered, answering the less crafty Julian, "Take it, you fool! take
any odds they'll give!" and, while Julian complied, adding to Hugh: "Oh,
you'll pay for this--along with the rest of it!"

"You'll pay for this first!" put in Julian, "and with your lives--the
pair of you!"

Hugh and Gilmore merely turned again toward the stair, but a voice
stopped them though addressed only to the twins.

"Did you say pair?" it inquired.

The boat was at the bank; her great wheels were still. The sun's last
ray tipped the oak-leaf caps of her soaring chimneys. Once more from the
cook-house rose the incense of coffee, hot rolls, and beefsteak, and
from her myriad lamps soft yellow gleams fell upon the wind-rippled
water an