He
knew before he slipped his hand over the breast of Diaz that this was
death. Then he rose again and watched the still fingers which seemed
to be gripping at the boards. These he saw, and nothing else, and
all he heard was the rattling of the wind of winter, wrenching at some
loose shingle on the roof, and he knew that he was alone in the world,
for he had put out a life.
He found a strange weight pulling down his right hand, and started
when he saw the revolver. He replaced it in the holster automatically,
and in so doing touched the barrel and found it warm.
Then fear came to Pierre, the first real fear of his life. He jerked
his head high and looked about him. The room was utterly empty. He
tiptoed to the door and found even the long bar deserted, littered
with tall bottles and overturned glasses. The cold in his heart
increased. A moment before he had been hand in hand with all the mirth
in that place.
Now the men whose laughter he had repeated with smiles, the men
against whose sleeves his elbow had touched, were further away from
him than they had been when all the snow-covered miles from Morgantown
to the school of Father Victor had laid between them.
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