For a minute, which to an onlooker would have seemed interminable, the two men faced each other. Up from the street came the ring of a heavy hammer on a sweet-voiced anvil, as Jim Donovan, the blacksmith, sharpened anew the breaking ploughs which were battling the prairie sod for bread. In the street below, a group of farmers were swapping yarns, an 205 occasional chorus of guffaws interrupting to punctuate the narrative. The combatants heard it all, as one hears the drone of the cicada on a sleepy summer day; at the moment, as a mere colorless background which later, Time, the greater adjuster, utilizes to harmonize the whole memory.
Ichabod had been standing; now he sat down upon the bed, his long legs stretched out before him.
“It would be useless for us to temporize,” he initiated. “I’ve intruded my presence in order to ask you a question.” The long fingers locked slowly over his knees. “What is your object here?”
The innate spirit of mockery sprang to the little man’s face.
“You’re mistaken,” he smiled; “so far mistaken, that instead of your visit being an intrusion, I expected you”––an amending memory came to him––“although I wasn’t looking for you quite so soon, perhaps.” He paused for an instant, and the smile left his lips.
“As to the statement of object. I think”––slowly––“a disinterested observer would have 206 put the question you ask into my mouth.” He stared his tall visitor up and down critically, menacingly. Of a sudden, irresistibly, a very convulsion shot over his face. “God, man, you’re brazen!” he commented cumulatively.
Ichabod had gambled with this man in the past, and had seen him lose half he possessed without the twitch of an eyelid. A force which now could cause that sudden change of expression––no man on earth knew, better than Ichabod, its intensity. Perhaps a shade of the same feeling crept into his own answering voice.
“We’ll quarrel later, if you wish,”––swiftly. “Neither of us can afford to do so now. I ask you again, what are your intentions?”
“And I repeat, the question is by right mine. It’s not I who’ve changed my name and––and in other things emulated the hero of the yellow-back.”
Ichabod’s face turned a shade paler, though his answer was calm.