“There isn’t any,” said Seaforth, “but I can tell you the middle.  One day the quiet man, who was living by himself way up in the bush, went out hunting, and as he had eaten very little for a week he was tolerably hungry.  Well, when he had been out all day be got a deer, and was packing it home at night when he struck a belt of thick timber.  The man was played out from want of food, the deer was heavy, but he dragged himself along thinking of his supper, until something twinkled beneath a fir.  He jumped when he saw it, but he wasn’t quick enough, and went down with a bullet in him.  His rifle fell away from him where he couldn’t get it without the other man seeing him, and he was bleeding fast, but still sensible enough to know that nobody would start out on a contract of that kind without his magazine full.  It was a tolerably tight place for him—­the man was worn out, and almost famishing, and he lay there in the snow, getting fainter every minute, with one leg no use to him.”

Seaforth looked round as though to see what impression he had made, and though all the faces were turned towards him it was one among them his eyes rested on.  Deringham was leaning forward in his chair with fingers closed more tightly about the glass he held than there seemed any necessity for.  His eyes were slightly dilated, and Seaforth fancied he read in them a growing horror.

“He crawled away into the bush?” said somebody.

“No, sir,” said Seaforth, “he just wriggled into the undergrowth and waited for the other man.”

“Waited for him?” said Forel.

“Yes,” said Seaforth.  “That is what he did, and when the other man came along peering into the bushes, just reached out and grabbed him by the leg.  Then they both rolled over, and I think that must have been a tolerably grim struggle.  There they were, alone, far up in the bush, and probably not a living soul within forty miles of them.”

Seaforth stopped again and reached out for his glass, while he noticed that Deringham emptied his at a gulp and refilled it with fingers that seemed to shake a trifle.

“And your friend got away?” said somebody.

“No, sir,” said Seaforth.  “It was the other man.  The one I knew had his hand on the other’s throat and his knife feeling for a soft place when his adversary broke away from him.  He did it just a moment too soon, for while he was getting out through the bush the other one dropped his knife and rolled over in the snow.  He lay there a day or two until somebody found him.”

Seaforth rose and moved towards the cigar-box on the table.  “And that’s all,” he said.

“Dramatic, but it’s a little incomplete, isn’t it?” said the Englishman.

Seaforth smiled somewhat dryly, and once more glanced casually towards Deringham.  “It may be finished by and by, and I fancy the wind-up will be more dramatic still,” he said.  “You see the man who would wait for his enemy with only a knife in his hand while his life drained away from him, is scarcely likely to forget an injury.”