Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/262

232 earlier moments of that slow December dawn to say whether he would recognize that his young friend had merely taken the law into his own hands and done bare justice, and therefore the past could be left buried, or whether he must return retribution upon that young man and bring back all that hidden and forgotten past—all was no matter; he must decide now within five minutes. For it was a sportsman's compact he had made with himself to rise with the sun and act one way or the other, and he kept compacts with himself as obstinately and as unflinchingly as a man must who has lived decently a long life alone, without any employment or outside discipline.

Now the great, crimson aurora shooting up into the sky warned him that day was close upon him; now the semi-circle of gray waters was bisected by a broad and blood red pathway; now white darts at the aurora's center foretold the coming of the sun. He swung his feet out of bed and sat up—a stalwart, rosy, obstinate old man, his thick, white, wiry hair touseled in his indecision—and, reaching over swiftly, snatched up a loose coin which lay with his watch and keys upon the table beside his bed.

"I'll give him equal chances anyway," he satisfied himself as he sat on the edge of the bed with the coin in his hands. "Tails, he goes free, but heads, he—hangs!"

Then waiting for the first direct gleam of the sun to give him his signal, he spun it and put his bare foot upon it as it twirled upon the floor.

"Heads!" He removed his foot and looked at it without stooping. He pushed his feet into the slippers