jacket, with shirt-front shining like his venerable pate, and studded with a couple of good pearls, might well have put us to the blush. Under his arm he carried a big cigar-box, and this he presented to Delavoye with a courtly sparkle.
"You rushed to our aid last night, Mr. Delavoye, and we nearly shot you for your pains!" said the colonel. "Pray accept a souvenir which in your hands, I hope, and in similar circumstances, is less likely to end in so much smoke."
Uvo lifted the lid and the gas-light flashed from the plated parts of a six-chambered revolver with a six-inch barrel. It was one of the deadly brace that we had seen on the colonel's chimneypiece in the middle of the night.
"I can't take it from you," said Delavoye, shrinking palpably from the pistol. "I really am most grateful to you, Colonel Cheffins, but I've done nothing to deserve such a handsome gift."
"I beg to differ," said the colonel, "and I shall be sorely hurt if you refuse it. You never know when your turn may come; after your own account of that plate-chest, I shan't lie easy in my bed until I feel you are properly prepared against the worst."
"But my poor mother would rather lose every salt-cellar, Colonel Cheffins, than have a man shot dead on her stairs."
"I shouldn't dream of shooting him dead," replied the colonel. "I shouldn't even go as far as I went last night, if I could help it. But with that barrel glittering in your hand, Mr. Delavoye, I fancy you'd find it easier to keep up a conversation with some intrusive connoisseur."
"Is it loaded?" I asked as Uvo took the weapon gingerly from its box.
"Not at the moment, and I fear these few cartridges are all I can spare. I only keep enough myself for an emergency. I need hardly warn you, by the way, against pistol practice in these little gardens? It would be most unsafe with a revolver of this calibre. Why, God bless my soul, you might bring down some unfortunate person in the next parish!"
I entirely agreed, but Delavoye was not attending. He was playing with the colonel's offering as a child plays with fire, with the same intent face and meddlesome maladroitness. It was a mercy it was not loaded. I saw him wince as the hammer snapped unexpectedly; then he kept on snapping it, as though the sensation fascinated ear or finger; and just as I found myself enduring an intolerable suspense, Uvo ended it with a reckless light in his sunken eyes.
"I'm a lost man, Gilly!" said he, with a grim twinkle for my benefit. "I was afraid I should be if I once felt it in my paw. It's extraordinarily kind of you, Colonel Cheffins, and you must forgive me if I seem to have been looking your gift in the barrel. But the fact is I have always been rather chary of these pretty things, and I must thank you for the chance of overcoming the 

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