we'll get along as comfortably as you
please."

But I declined to be sent away in this fashion for all that I was
horribly afraid. "I can't sit down at that table," I explained, "but
I'll keep coming in and out of the room as the spirit moves me. Now,
don't say a word; I've made up my mind."

"Well, I sha'n't forget it," said Indiman, simply. Then, in an
undertone: "As a matter of absolute fact, the fellow is a coward, and
he'll weaken at the end. There isn't the slightest danger--be sure of
that."

Hour by hour the early evening dragged away, and then began that
interminable night. I spent most of the time in the dining-room at the
back, smoking and pretending to read. Twice the book slipped from my
hand, and I woke with a horrid start from my cat-nap. Then I would go
softly to the library door and peep in. Always the same tableau--the
two men sitting opposite each other, alert, silent, watchful, and
between them the shaded lamp and that little box lying in the circle of
its light.

At about four o'clock I came in and mended the fire in the grate, for
the house was growing chilly. Indiman looked over at me and smiled
brightly. "Well, it's good to be out of the old ruts, isn't it?" he
said. "'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay,' as some
one has truthfully remarked. He was a philosopher, that fellow. Wish we
had him here with us to-night; we'd teach him a thing or two more about
what living really is."

After that I walked up and down the dining-room floor pretty steadily
until the dawn began to steal over the chimney-pots of the houses at
the back. It wasn't a pretty sky that the light revealed, dull and
streaky looking, with a suggestion of coming rain. I stood looking at
it in an absent-minded, miserable sort of stupor; then I heard Indiman
calling me.

"I'm out of cigars," he explained. "There's a box in the buffet; and
just put out the lamp, will you."

Grenelli looked haggard in the gray light that streamed into the room
as I drew the curtains. He started, too, when he saw that the day had
come--it was quite perceptible.

"I should like to know the time," he growled. "It's only fair."

"To be sure," assented Indiman, and he pushed his watch, face upward,
into the middle of the table. The dial indicated half-past seven, at
which I was somewhat surprised, for I had not thought it so late. But
my own watch had run down, and it will be remembered that Indiman had
stopped the mantel-clock