"Yes, I'll lend them to you," he answered, without meeting the other's eyes.
"You're a jolly good chap; I always knew it, " cried Will heartily. "I'll take them out at midnight, when there's a good moon, and get Jerry Green to drive them back to-morrow. Hurrah! It's the best night's work you ever did!"
He went out hurriedly, still singing his college song, and Christopher, without moving from his place, stood watching the big white moth that circled dizzily about the lantern. At the instant he regretted that Will had appealed to him—regretted even that he had promised him the horses. He wished it had all come about without his knowledge—that Fletcher's punishment and Will's ruin had been wrought less directly by his own intervention. Next he told himself that he would have stopped this thing had it been possible, and then with the thought he became clearly aware that it was still in his power to prevent the marriage. He had but to walk across the fields to Fletcher's door, and before sunrise the foolish pair would be safely home again. Will would probably be sent off to recover, and Molly would go back to making butter and to flirting with Fred Turner. On the other hand, let the marriage but take place—let him keep silent until the morning—and the revenge of which he had dreamed since childhood would be accomplished at a single stroke. Bill Fletcher's many sins would find him out in a night.
The big moth, fluttering aimlessly from the lantern, flew suddenly in his face, and the touch startled him from his abstraction. With a laugh he shook the responsibility from his shoulders, and then, as he hesitated again for a breath, the racial instinct arose, as usual, to decide the issue.
Taking a dime from his pocket, he tossed it lightly in the air and waited for it to fall.
"Heads for me, tails for Fletcher."
The coin spun for an instant in the gloom above him and then dropped noiselessly to the floor. When he lifted the lantern and bent over it he saw that the head lay uppermost.
CHAPTER VIII. In Which Christopher Triumphs
When he entered the house a little later Cynthia met him in the kitchen doorway with an anxious frown.
"I heard a noise, Christopher. What was it?"