“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, that spun and yet was motionless, in the very middle of the floor, while all the rest of the room grew suddenly dimmed.

Zeb with a gasp drew his eyes away for a second and glanced around.  Fiddlers and guests seemed ghostly after the fierce light he had been gazing on.  He looked along the pale faces to the place where Ruby stood.  She, too, glanced up, and their eyes met.

What he saw fetched a sob from his throat.  Then something on the floor caught his attention:  something bright, close by his feet.