surroundings; then Irene turned to some
arrangements for his comfort, and Dave started down stairs. In the
passage he was met by Conward. Conward seemed at last to have dropped
the mask; he leered insolently, triumphantly, in Dave's face.

"What are you doing here?" Dave demanded, as he felt his head beginning
to swim in anger.

Conward leered only the more offensively, and walked down the stairs
beside him. At the foot he coolly lit another cigarette. If he was
conscious of the hate in Dave's eyes he hid his emotions under a mask
of insolence. He held the match before him and calmly watched it burn
out. Then he extended it toward Dave.

"You remember our wager, Elden. I present you with--a burnt-out match."

"You liar!" cried Dave. "You infamous liar!"

"Ask _her_," Conward replied. "She will deny it, of course. All women
do."

Dave felt his muscles tighten, and knew that in a moment he would tear
his victim to pieces. As his clenched fist came to the side of his
body it struck something hard. His revolver! He had forgotten; he was
not in the habit of carrying it. In an instant he had Conward covered.

Dave did not press the trigger at once. He took a fierce delight in
torturing the man who had wrecked his life,--even while he told himself
he could not believe his boast. Now he watched the colour fade from
Conward's cheek; the eyes stand out in his face; the livid blotches
more livid still; the cigarette drop from his nerveless lips.

"You are a brave man, Conward," he said, and there was the rasp of hate
and contempt in his voice. "You are a very brave man."

Mrs. Hardy, sensing something wrong, came out from her sitting-room.
With a little cry she swooned away.

Conward tried to speak, but words stuck in his throat. With a dry
tongue he licked his drier lips.

"Do you believe in hell, Conward?" Dave continued. "I've always had
some doubt myself, but in thirty seconds--_you'll know_."

Irene, attracted by her mother's cry, appeared on the stairway. For a
moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them; Conward
cowering, terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his
revolver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her
mind her thought in that instant flew back to the bottles on the posts
of the Elden ranch, and Dave breaking five out of six on the gallop.
Then, suddenly, she became aware of one thing only. A tragedy was
being enacted before her eye