"You're a good pal, Stevie; you're the best pal as ever was an' I know it! Didn't I always know you'd be like this? But can't you see, Stevie, can't you see it ain't enough another man should lick him, even when that man's my pardner, even when it's Stevie himself doin' it! Ain't I been waitin' an' waitin' to get my hands on him!" Blenham, a little comforted by Steve's words, jeered openly now. "Come on, Blind Billy," he taunted. "An' when I've throwed you into the junk pile I'll take on your friends! One at the time--you know how the sayin' goes!" Steve was shaking Royce's hand from his arm. "Let me do this for you, Bill," he said firmly. "It's only fair. If you could see, it would be different." But Royce clung on desperately, crying out insistently: "Blind as I am I can lick him! I know I can lick him! Ain't I done it in my sleep a dozen times, a dozen ways? Ain't I always promised myself sometime I'd get him in my two hands, I'd feel him wriggle an' squirm? This is my fight, Steve, an'--Blenham, where are you?" "Here!" cried Blenham. "An' gettin' tired of waitin'!" Royce plunged toward him. But Steve Packard caught his old friend about the body, holding him back a moment. "Easy, Bill," he said gently. "Easy. I was wrong, you are right. It's your fight. But take your time. Get your coat off. Barbee, stand by that window there; if Blenham tries to get out stop him. I'll stand here. All ready, Bill?" "Ready!" cried Royce, his voice a roar of eagerness. "All ready, Blenham?" "Ain't I said it?" jeered Blenham. "Then--" and suddenly Steve had snatched up the lamp, blowing down the chimney and plunging the room into thick darkness--"go to it! The light is out, Bill! The room is pitch-black. You're as well off as he is. And now, old pardner. Now!" It was suddenly very still in the room; the thick, impenetrable darkness seemed almost a palpable curtain screening what went forward; the silence was for a little literally breathless. Then there came the first faint, tell-tale sound, the slow, tortured creaking of a board as a man put his weight upon it. Through the darkness, across the room, Bill Royce was going slowly, questing the man who, surprised by the action of Steve's which had reduced his advantage over a blind man, held to his corner. And then, stranger sound still through that tense silence, came Bill Royce's low laugh. "Good boy, Steve," he said softly. "I'd never thought of that! In the dark Blenham's as blind as me! How do you like it, Blenham? How'd you like to have it this way all the time?" Blenham's only answer lay in his leaping forward, out from his corner, and striking; Royce's answer to that was another quiet laugh. He had slipped aside; Blenham had flailed at the thin air; Royce, grown still again, knew one of the moments of sheer joy which had been his during these last weary months.