The man was in no hurry, and struck again with the flint and steel. As
the sparks fell thick and bright about him, I could see his hands, and
touches of his face, and could make out that he was seated and bending
over the table; but nothing more. Presently I saw his blue lips again,
breathing on the tinder, and then a flare of light flashed up, and
showed me Orlick.
Whom I had looked for, I don't know. I had not looked for him. Seeing
him, I felt that I was in a dangerous strait indeed, and I kept my eyes
upon him.
He lighted the candle from the flaring match with great deliberation,
and dropped the match, and trod it out. Then he put the candle away from
him on the table, so that he could see me, and sat with his arms folded
on the table and looked at me. I made out that I was fastened to a stout
perpendicular ladder a few inches from the wall,--a fixture there,--the
means of ascent to the loft above.
"Now," said he, when we had surveyed one another for some time, "I've
got you."
"Unbind me. Let me go!"
"Ah!" he returned, "I'll let you go. I'll let you go to the moon, I'll
let you go to the stars. All in good time."
"Why have you lured me here?"
"Don't you know?" said he, with a deadly look.
"Why have you set upon me in the dark?"
"Because I mean to do it all myself. One keeps a secret better than two.
O you enemy, you enemy!"
His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat with his arms
folded on the table, shaking his head at me and hugging himself, had a
malignity in it that made me tremble. As I watched him in silence,
he put his hand into the corner at his side, and took up a gun with a
brass-bound stock.
"Do you know this?" said he, making as if he would take aim at me. "Do
you know where you saw it afore? Speak, wolf!"
"Yes," I answered.
"You cost me that place. You did. Speak!"
"What else could I do?"
"You did that, and that would be enough, without more. How dared you to
come betwixt me and a young woman I liked?"
"When did I?"
"When didn't you? It was you as always give Old Orlick a bad name to
her."