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Philip heard both as he swung the stick of firewood over his head and sent it hurling toward the pack. The chance accuracy of the throw gave him an instant's time in which to turn and make a dash for the cabin. It was Celie who slammed the door shut as he sprang through. Swift as a flash she shot the bolt, and there came the lunge of heavy bodies outside.

There was another instant's pause, and she spoke again. "Are you so grieved, then," she said, "that this has come upon us?"

There was an instant's pause; then two other hands, wet, cool, slender, came up, clasping his. A little leap, a sudden strain, and a very pink face beneath a cloud of golden hair laughed down into his. "You must pull," she said; "pull hard!" Courteney obeyed instructions. He pulled, and a pair of slim shoulders clad in white, with a blue sailor collar, came into view.

His hand fell upon the first card which Lablache had dealt to himself. "The ace of clubs," shouted the rancher, his eyes blazing and his body fairly shaking with fury. He turned the card over. It was the ace of clubs. "Cheat!" he shouted. He had seen the card at the bottom of the pack as the other had ceased to shuffle. There was an instant's thrilling pause.

The emotion of the moment was one that made a mark on his life. He had an instant's wild notion of making some excuse to go home and dress, for his plight was by no means due to necessity.

"Wall, sir, now we'll have an accounting," he began in an authoritative voice. "So we will, Woody," returned John Stumpy, in no wise abashed by the other's manner. The merchant winced at the use of a nickname, but after an instant's hesitation passed it over. "What do you mean by coming to Darbyville, sir, when I have repeatedly written you to stay away?"

For an instant he was impelled to turn and fight, but at the same time the thought of the helpless girl imprisoned in the city flashed through his brain and, without an instant's hesitation, Tarzan of the Apes wheeled and ran for the wall. Then it was that Numa charged. Numa, the lion, can run swiftly for a short distance, but he lacks endurance.

Telling the robbed man to follow him, so as to help identification, he, without an instant's hesitation, descended the ladder. A few of us followed, to support our gallant leader. "I want the thief," he said; "he must restore the gold. You honest diggers are not to lose your earnings in this way."

All through the spring excitement, when the other birds, one after another, grew uneasy, belligerent, or unhappy, and one after another were returned to freedom, he never showed a moment's uneasiness, an instant's desire to be free, but scrupulously attended to his own regular business, which is to pound and pull and peck to pieces my furniture, and especially to destroy my books.

If he could but get one end of his grass rope caught upon some projection at the top of that tantalizing aperture! In the instant's pause and thought an idea occurred to him. He would attempt it. Turning back to the tumbled wall, he seized one of the large, flat slabs that had composed it.