tched the other man grimly.

"Ready?" asked his father's voice. "Then one--two--three, an' let fly!"

The fiddle-bows hung for an instant on the first note, and in a
twinkling scampered along into "Randy my dandy." As the quick air
caught at the listeners' pulses, the stranger crossed his arms, drew his
right heel up along the inner side of his left ankle, and with a light
nod towards the chimney-place began.

To the casual eye there was for awhile little to choose between the two
dancers, the stranger's style being accurate, restrained, even a trifle
dull. But of all the onlookers, Zeb knew best what hornpipe-dancing
really was; and knew surely, after the first dozen steps, that he was
going to be mastered. So far, the performance was academic only. Zeb,
unacquainted with the word, recognised the fact, and was quite aware of
the inspiration--the personal gift--held in reserve to transfigure this
precise art in a minute or so, and give it life. He saw the force
gathering in the steady rhythmical twinkle of the steel buckles, and
heard it speak in the light recurrent tap with which the stranger's
heels kissed the floor. It was doubly bitter that he and his enemy
alone should know what was coming; trebly bitter that his enemy should
be aware that he knew.

The crowder slackened speed for a second, to give warning, and dashed
into the heel-and-toe. Zeb caught the light in the dancer's eyes, and
still frowning, drew a long breath.

"Faster," nodded the stranger to the musicians' corner.

Then came the moment for which, by this time, Zeb was longing.
The stranger rested with heels together while a man might count eight
rapidly, and suddenly began a step the like of which none present had
ever witnessed, Above the hips his body swayed steadily, softly, to the
measure; his eyes never took their pleasant smile off Zeb's face, but
his feet--

The steel buckles had become two sparkling moths, spinning, poising,
darting. They no longer belonged to the man, but had taken separate
life: and merely the absolute symmetry of their loops and circles, and
the _click-click-click_ on boards, regular as ever, told of the art that
informed them.

"Faster!"

They crossed and re-crossed now like small flashes of lightning, or as
if the boards were flints giving out a score of sparks at every touch of
the man's heel.

"Faster!"

They seemed suddenly to catch the light out of every sconce, and knead
it into a ball of fire