“I don’t like that!  Let’s wait till the storm is over.  I can’t play with such candles as those flaring about us.”

“Damn it! you won’t know what candles you are playing by when once you see the pile I’ve got ready for you.  I’m in for a big bout.  You have ten dollars and I have a thousand.  I’ll play you for that ten.  If, in the meantime, you get my thousand, why, it’ll be because you’re the better man.”

“I don’t like it, I say.  There, see!”

A flood of white light had engulfed the house.  My closet, with its whitewashed walls flared about me like the mouth of a furnace.

“See, yourself!” came the careless retort, and with the words a gas-jet shot up, then two, then all that the room contained.  “How’s that?  What’s a flash more or less now!”

I heard no answer, only the slap of the cards as they were flung onto the table; then the clatter of a key as it was turned in some distant lock and the quick question: 

“Rum, or whisky.  Irish or Scotch?”

“Whisky and Irish.”

“Good! but you’ll drink it alone.”

The bottles were brought forward and they sat down one on each side of the dusty mahogany table.  The man facing me was Spencer, the other sat with his back my way, but I could now and then catch a glimpse of his profile as he started at some flash or lifted his head in terror of the thunder-claps.

“We’ll play till the hands point to three,” announced Spencer, taking out his watch and laying it down where both could see it.  “Do you agree to that?—­Unless I win and your funds go a-begging before the hour.”

“I agree.”  The tone was harsh; it was almost smothered.  The man was staring at the watch; there was a strange set look to his figure; a pausing as of thought—­of sinister thought, I should now say; then I never stopped to characterise it; it was followed too quickly by a loud laugh and a sudden grab at the cards.

“You’ll win!  I feel it in my bones,” came in encouraging tones from the rich man.  “If you do”—­here the storm lulled and his voice sank to an encouraging whisper—­“you can buy the old tavern up the road.  It’s going for a song; and then we’ll be neighbours and can play—­play—­”

Thunder!—­a terrific peal.  It shook the house; it shook my boyish heart, but it no longer had power to move the two gamesters.  The fever of play had reached its height, and I heard nothing more from their lips, but such phrases as belong to the game.  Why didn’t I take advantage of their absorption to fly?  The sill above my head was within easy reach, the sash was open and no sound that I could make would reach them in this hurly-burly of storm.  Why then, with all this invitation to escape, did I remain crouched in my dark retreat with eyes fixed on the narrow crack before me which, under some impulse of movement in the walls about, had widened sufficiently for me to see all that I have related?  I do not know, unless I was hypnotised by the glare of expression on those men’s faces.