No one in the room noticed what was going on in their corner. The others were all too busy with their own play, absorbed in their own greed; besides, squabbles over the tables were of such common occurrence, they ceased to excite any curiosity.
"I shan't," returned Katrine, shaking herself free.
The oily, smoky light from above fell across her face; it seemed to bloom through the foul, dusky air like a rose.
"It's my money—I won it."
"Yes, by cheating," shouted the miner, forgetting everything but the approaching loss he foresaw of the shining pile.
"You lie," said Stephen, hoarsely. "She has not cheated you."
The miner staggered to his feet, and before any of them realised it he had drawn his pistol and fired. His hand was unsteady from drink and rage, and the ball passed over Stephen's shoulder and went into the wall behind him. Talbot tried to draw Stephen to one side. The miner, blind with anger, half conscious only of what he was about, and drawing almost at random, turned his revolver on Talbot. Like a flash Katrine interposed between them, and Jim's bullet found a lodgment in her lungs. She had fired also. The shots had been simultaneous, and the miner fell, without a groan, without a murmur, forward across the table, carrying it with him to the floor. The gold pile scattered amongst the filthy sawdust on the ground. Katrine sank backwards into Talbot's arms, and her head fell to his shoulder like that of a tired child falling to sleep.
In an instant they were surrounded by an eager inquiring throng. All the tables, with some few exceptions, were deserted; the players all crowded up to the end of the room, and Stephen and Talbot were carried back to the wall by the pressing crowd. Some of the men raised the body of the miner; he was dead. The people pressed round, and one glance at the set face told them. A momentary awe spread amongst them, and the men who had raised the body carried it to a bench and laid it there. Stephen, pallid as the dead man himself, looked round in desperation on the staring crowd.
"Is there a surgeon or a doctor here?" he asked.
Katrine heard him, and raised herself a little in Talbot's arms; he was standing against the wall now. She turned her eyes towards Stephen and stretched out her hand.