I became spellbound watching them, wondering what would happen. I forgot the cold; and the immensity of blackness all around me held no hidden fears, for all my mind was on that strange pair in the hut, shining red with the leaping flames, and looming black as the fire slackened. This was the best game I had seen, and I was an enthralled spectator eagerly watching for the moves. And, though I knew it not, blacker than the night about me was the shadow of an old crime that had caught me in its darkness and would bring on my head also a measure of doom. It is impossible for me to say just what were my feelings at the time, for the incident has been so often rehearsed by my father with such dramatic distinctness that I hardly remember what I saw through the slit in the coat, and what I learnt afterwards; also I have come to regard it so much from my father's standpoint rather than from my own that it is difficult to disentangle my own feelings from his, and in telling what happened I may seem to be reading more into the affair than I could possibly have comprehended at the time. But this I know, that as the woman spread her hands to the blaze, whimpering curses against the cold and the night and the ill folk that grudged a starving body a bit o' warmth, and drove you from their doors without a bite or a sip, I could see her furtively scanning the hut, searching out, as it seemed to me, possible hiding-places. Why I cannot say, but the fear grew in my heart that it was me she was looking for, and as the black hollows where her eyes were hidden rested on the coat behind which I crouched a shudder passed through me, for I remember how suddenly the fire lit up her eyes in their dark caverns, and the fierce red balls seemed menacingly fixed on me. I shrank back into the night, but not so far that I couldn't still with difficulty see into the hut. And while the woman whined and droned her endless tale of wrong my father was muttering and chuckling insanely in his corner, puffing out his cheeks, blowing in his hands, sometimes leaning forward and grinning amiably at the old hag, and sometimes snarling malignantly at her, or beating and clutching at imaginary tormentors. But I thought he watched her all the while, and took due note of her peering and prying.