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124 his hand into his pocket and brought out a key. He put it in the lock of a drawer of the cabinet, fumbling after the aperture and missing it more than once. Then he opened the drawer, took out a pair of dueling pistols, and laid them on the table.

“They’re loaded,” he said. “Examine them for yourself.”

I did not move; but I took my little friend out of my pocket.

“If I’m attacked,” said I, “I shall defend myself; but I’m not going to fight a duel here, without witnesses, at the dead of night, in your house.”

“Call it what you like then,” said he; and he snatched up a pistol from the table.

He was beyond remonstrance, influence, or control. I believe that in a moment he would have fired; and I must have fired also, or gone to my death as a sheep to the slaughter. But as he spoke there came a sound, just audible, which made him pause, with his right hand that held the pistol raised halfway to the level of his shoulder.

Faint as the sound was, slight as the interruption it would seem to offer to the full career of a madman’s fury, it was yet enough to check him, to call him back to consciousness of something else in the world than his balked passion and the man whom he deemed to have thwarted it.

“What’s that?” he whispered.

It was the lowest, softest knock at the door—a knock that even in asking attention almost