Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-39.djvu/60

50 paper label pasted upon it, and scratching the surface of the tin. The dagger was his, unless I could "get into the soup," as he expressed it. I aimed carefully; but I must have been in bad form: my shot flew wide by several inches. We had all used thirty-two-calibre revolvers of the best make.

"Well, Harry, you're the lucky man," said John. And if my honest brother were capable of a double meaning, I should have looked for it in that speech.

But Sinfire said, "I am the judge. I say none of you can have the prize; for none of you have hit the mark. I could shoot better than that myself."

"If it were a human heart I could believe you; but a soup-can,—no!" said Henry, glancing at her, with a laugh.

She met his look, and a retort seemed on her lips; but she closed them, and drew from the pocket of her dress her little derringer. Extending her arm, and scarcely seeming to take aim, she pulled the trigger. The small weapon went off with a loud bang, the soup-can vibrated as with a mortal blow, and, behold! there was a round hole in the centre of the tin disk, out of which welled the essence of the green turtle. The dagger was Sinfire's.

But she waywardly refused to take it. "I was not in the match," she said.

"But you drew the first soup," argued Henry.

"I don't care for daggers: I prefer derringers," she returned.

"So I should suppose. But have you no regard for your friends?"

"Well, I'll compromise with you," she said, at last: "I will accept the dagger as a legacy: you may bequeath it to me in your will."

"So be it; only, that codicil must contain a stipulation that the bequest shall not be carried out in case the testator dies of a derringer."

"If the bullet passes through his heart, I agree," said Sinfire. But whether she meant that his heart was too small to be thus penetrated, or too hard, or what else she meant or did not mean, is probably not of much consequence. We returned to the house in an hilarious mood; and that evening my supposed rheumatism declared itself as an acute case of gout.

Considering that my regimen of life has been the least self-indulgent of any of my father's sons', this seems hardly fair. But there is