tails?"

"Name 'm and be quick," acquiesced his big opponent before the others
could speak.

"Thanks, Mr. Duggin," with equal swiftness. "These, then, are the
conditions." For three seconds, that seemed a minute, Ichabod looked
steadily between his adversary's bushy eyebrows. "The conditions," he
repeated, "are, that starting from opposite ends of the room, we don't
fire until our toes touch in the middle line."

"Good!" commended a voice; but it was not big Duggin who spoke.

"I'll see that it's done, too,"--added a listening cattleman, grasping
Ichabod by the hand.

"And I."

The building had been designed as a bowling-alley and was built the
entire length of the lot. With an alacrity born of experience, the
long space opposite the bar was cleared, and the belligerents
stationed one at either end, their faces toward the wall. Midway
between them a heavy line had been drawn with chalk, and beside it
stood a half-dozen grim men, their hands resting suggestively on their
hips. The room was again very quiet, and from out-of-doors penetrated
the shrill sound of a schoolboy whistling "Annie Laurie" with original
variations. So exotic seemed the entire scene in its prairie setting,
that it might have been transferred bodily from the stage of a distant
theatre and set down here,--by mistake.

"Now," directed a voice. "You understand, men. You're to face and walk
to the line. When your feet touch--fire; and," warningly--"remember,
not before. Ready, gentlemen. Turn."

Ichabod faced about, the cocked revolver in his hand, the name Asa
Arnold singing in his ears. A terrible cold-white anger was in his
heart against the man opposite, who had publicly caused the
resurrection of this hated, buried thing. For a moment it blotted
out all other sensations; then, rushing, crowding came other
thoughts,--vision from boyhood down. In the space of seconds, faded
scenes of the dead past took on sudden color and as suddenly
vanished. Faces, he had forgotten for years, flashed instantaneously
into view. Voices long hushed in oblivion, re-embodied, spoke in
accents as familiar as his own. Inwardly he was seething with the
myriad shifting pictures of a drowning man. Outwardly he walked
those half-score steps to the line, unflinchingly; came to certain
death,--and waited: personification of all that is cool and
deliberate--of the sudden abundant nerve in emergencies which comes
only to the highly evolved.

Duggin, the big man, turne