ve of sickness. But weak health did not imply
weak purpose; every feature in that hawk-like face was sharp with hatred,
and in the narrowing eye was vengeance that is sweet.

He stood still; there was in his hatred a something hypnotic that grew
imperceptibly and imperceptibly communicated itself to the men at table.
He gloated over the eating fat man as if he had dwelt much in imagination
on the sight and was in no hurry to curtail his joy at the reality. The
men began to get restless, shuffle their feet, moisten their lips; only
the college boy spoke, and then from a wealth of ignorance, knowing
nothing of the rugged, give-and-take justice of the plains--an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth, and the law and the courts go hang while a man's
got a right arm to pull a trigger. Not one in all that company, even the
cattle-men whose interests were opposed to Rodney's, but felt the justice
of his errand.

"When did they let him out?" whispered the college boy; and then,
"Oughtn't we to do something?"

"Yis, me son," whispered Costigan. "We ought to sit still and learn a
thing or two."

The fat man cleaned his plate with a crust of bread stuck on the point of
a knife. There was nothing more to eat in the way of substantials, and he
debated pouring a little more of the sauce on his plate and mopping it
with a bit of bread still uneaten. Considering the pro and con of this
extra tid-bit, he glanced up and saw the gaunt man standing in the
doorway.

Simpson dropped the knife from his shaking hand and started up with a cry
that died away in a gurgle, an inhuman, nightmare croak. He looked about
wildly, like a rat in a trap, then backed towards the wall. The men about
the table got up, then cleared away in a circle, leaving the fat man. It
was all like a dream to the college boy, who had never seen a thing of the
kind before and could not realize now that it was happening. Rodney
advanced, never once relaxing the look in which he seemed to hold his
enemy as in a vise. Simpson was like a man bewitched. Once, twice, he made
a grab for his revolver, but his right hand seemed to have lost power to
heed the bidding of his will. Rodney, now well towards the centre of the
room, waited, with a suggestion of ceremony, for Simpson to get his
six-shooter.

It was one of those moments in which time seems to have become petrified.
The limp-clad proprietress of the eating-house, made curious by the sudden
silence, looked in from the k