weakness."His tone was sincere enough. So was the grave face turned upon ColonelCheffins. But its very gravity angered and alarmed me, and I wasdetermined to have his decision in more explicit terms.

"Then the pistol's yours, is it, Uvo?" I asked, with the mostdisingenuous grin that I could muster.

"Till death us do part!" he answered. And his laugh jarred every fibrein my body.I never knew how seriously to take him; that was the worst of hiselusive humour, or it may be of my own deficiency in any such quality. Iconfess I like a man to laugh at his own jokes, and to look as though hemeant the things he does mean. Uvo Delavoye would do either--orneither--as the whim took him, and I used sometimes to think hecultivated a wilful subtlety for my special bewilderment. Thus in thisinstance he was quite capable of assuming an alarming pose to pay me outfor any undue anxiety I might betray on his behalf; therefore I had toadmire the revolver in my turn, and even to acclaim it as a timelyacquisition. But either Uvo was not deceived, or else I was right as tohis morbid feeling about the weapon. He seemed unable to lay it down.Sometimes he did so with apparent resolution, only to pick it up againand sit twisting the empty chambers round and round, till they tickedlike the speedometer of a coasting bicycle. Once he slipped in one ofthe cartridges. The colonel looked at me, and I perched myself on thedesk at Uvo's side. But the worst thing of all was the way his handtrembled as he promptly picked that cartridge out again.

We had said not a word, but Uvo rattled on with glib vivacity and thelaugh that got upon my nerves. His new possession was his only theme. Hecould no more drop the subject than the thing itself. It was therevolver, the whole revolver, and nothing but the revolver for UvoDelavoye that night. He was childishly obsessed with its unpleasantpossibilities, but he treated them with a grim levity not unredeemed bywit. His bloodthirsty prattle grew into a quaint and horrible harangueeked out with quotations that stuck like burs. More than once I lookedto Colonel Cheffins for a disapproval which would come with more weightfrom him than me; but decanter and syphon had been brought up soon afterhis arrival, and he only sipped his whisky with an amused air that mademe wonder which of us was going daft.

"Talk about bare bodkins, otherwise hollow-ground razors!" cried Uvo,emptying his glass. "I couldn't do the trick with cold steel if I tried;but with a revolver you've only got to press the trigger and it does therest. Then--I wonder if you even live to hear the 

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