"Ain't I said it?" jeered Blenham.

"Then--" and suddenly Steve had snatched up the lamp, blowing down the
chimney and plunging the room into thick darkness--"go to it! The
light is out, Bill! The room is pitch-black. You're as well off as he
is. And now, old pardner. Now!"

It was suddenly very still in the room; the thick, impenetrable
darkness seemed almost a palpable curtain screening what went forward;
the silence was for a little literally breathless.

Then there came the first faint, tell-tale sound, the slow, tortured
creaking of a board as a man put his weight upon it. Through the
darkness, across the room, Bill Royce was going slowly, questing the
man who, surprised by the action of Steve's which had reduced his
advantage over a blind man, held to his corner. And then, stranger
sound still through that tense silence, came Bill Royce's low laugh.

"Good boy, Steve," he said softly. "I'd never thought of that! In the
dark Blenham's as blind as me! How do you like it, Blenham? How'd you
like to have it this way all the time?"

Blenham's only answer lay in his leaping forward, out from his corner,
and striking; Royce's answer to that was another quiet laugh. He had
slipped aside; Blenham had flailed at the thin air; Royce, grown still
again, knew one of the moments of sheer joy which had been his during
these last weary months.

Packard and Barbee, frowning unavailingly toward each little noise,
could only guess at what went forward so few inches from them. A
scraping foot might be either Royce's or Blenham's; a long, deep sigh
or quick breathing now here, now there, might emanate from either man.
The strange thing, thought both Barbee and Packard, was that even ten
seconds could pass without these two men at each other's throats.

But, a supreme moment his at last, Bill Royce found himself grown
miserly in its expenditure; he would dribble the golden seconds through
his fingers, he would draw out the experience, tasting its joy fully.

For the moment his blindness was no greater than Blenham's; for a
little Blenham would grope and wonder and hesitate and grow tense after
the fashion the blind man knew so well. And then at the end, when an
end could no longer be delayed, Bill Royce would mete out the
long-delayed punishment.

But, since the natures of both men were downright, since their hatreds
were outright, since there was little of finesse in either and a great
impatience stirring both,