The evening waned, but it brought no sign of any of the missing
three. The wood burned low in the fire. The first to break the long
silence was Jim Boone, with "Who brings in the wood?"
And Black Gandil answered: "We'll match, eh?"
In an outburst of energy the day before he disappeared Garry Patterson
had chopped up some wood and left a pile of it at the corner of the
house. It was a very little thing to bring in an armful of that wood,
but long-riders do not love work, and now they started the matching
seriously. The odd man was out, and Pierre went out on the first toss
of the coins.
"You see," said Gandil. "Bad luck to everyone but himself."
At the next throw Jacqueline was the lucky one, and her father
afterward. Gandil rose and stretched himself leisurely, yet as he
sauntered toward the door his backward glance at Pierre was black
indeed. He glanced curiously toward Jack--who looked away sharply--and
then turned his eyes to her father.
The latter was considering him with a gloomy, foreboding stare and
considering over and over again, as Pierre le Rouge well knew, the
prophecy of Black Morgan Gandil.
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