"You'd better lie down," suggested Keith.
Conniston, instead, rose slowly to his feet and went to a table on
which a seal-oil lamp was burning. He swayed a little as he walked. He
sat down, and Keith seated himself opposite him. Between them lay a
worn deck of cards. As Conniston fumbled them in his fingers, he looked
straight across at Keith and grinned.
"It's queer, devilish queer," he said.
"Don't you think so, Keith?" He was an Englishman, and his blue eyes
shone with a grim, cold humor. "And funny," he added.
"Queer, but not funny," partly agreed Keith.
"Yes, it is funny," maintained Conniston. "Just twenty-seven months
ago, lacking three days, I was sent out to get you, Keith. I was told
to bring you in dead or alive--and at the end of the twenty-sixth month
I got you, alive. And as a sporting proposition you deserve a hundred
years of life instead of the noose, Keith, for you led me a chase that
took me through seven different kinds of hell before I landed you. I
froze, and I starved, and I drowned. I haven't seen a white woman's
face in eighteen months. It was terrible. But I beat you at last.
That's the jolly good part of it, Keith--I beat you and GOT you, and
there's the proof of it on your wrists this minute.
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