“Do you dare to drink with me?” Dubarre asked, nodding towards the glasses. “Two of the glasses have poison in them, two have good red wine only. We will move them about and then drink. Both may die, or only one of us.”
Villiard looked at the other with contracting, questioning eyes.
“You would play that game with me?” he asked, in a mechanical voice.
“It would give me great pleasure.” The voice had a strange, ironical tone. “It is a grand sport—as one would take a run at a crevasse and clear it, or fall. If we both fall, we are in good company; if you fall, I have the greater joy of escape; if I fall, you have the same joy.”
“I am ready,” was the answer. “But let us eat first.”
A great fire burned in the chimney, for the night was cool. It filled the room with a gracious heat and with huge, comfortable shadows. Here and there on the wall a tin cup flashed back the radiance of the fire, the barrel of a gun glistened soberly along a rafter, and the long, wiry hair of an otter-skin in the corner sent out little needles of light. Upon the fire a pot was simmering, and a good savour came from it. A wind went lilting by outside the but in tune with the singing of the kettle. The ticking of a huge, old-fashioned repeating-watch on the wall was in unison with these.
Dubarre rose from the table, threw himself upon the little pile of otter-skins, and lay watching Villiard and mechanically studying the little room.
Villiard took the four glasses filled with the wine and laid them on a shelf against the wall, then began to put the table in order for their supper, and to take the pot from the fire.
Dubarre noticed that just above where the glasses stood on the shelf a crucifix was hanging, and that red crystal sparkled in the hands and feet where the nails should be driven in. There was a painful humour in the association. He smiled, then turned his head away, for old memories flashed through his brain—he had been an acolyte once; he had served at the altar.
Suddenly Dubarre rose, took the glasses from the shelf and placed them in the middle of the table—the death’s head for the feast.