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time.
    She was still crying, thinking about her disillusionment in Eldridge, when she struck a match. Carefully she set the candle on the table next to herself and lit it.
    She paused. The candle looked so peaceful and contented.
    Helen Marcott picked up the letter Jules had thoughtfully enclosed. How gentle, how nice of him.
    She read the letter over again, taking in every word.
    * * * *
    “Darling Helen: A little remembrance to show that there are no hard feelings. This is a prayer candle. To bring good fortune and happiness to the one you love, light the candle in the evening and, three times, repeat the name of your beloved.
    With fond memories,
    Jules.”
    Helen Marcott brushed away the tears. She turned to the flaming candlestick. Her gentle breath touched the flame, three times, quietly, fervently, longingly, as she said: “Jules—Jules—Jules—”
    The candle flame flickered.
     

 THE DUCKER
     
    This was first published in the winter 1943 issue of Weird Tales, and reprinted the next year Weird Tales (Canada). “The Ducker” was also anthologized in the British anthology, Weird Legacies (1977), and became the forerunner for “Bang! You’re Dead!,” another short story featuring protagonist Johnny Choir which came out in 1944.
     
    * * * *
     
    The transport was loaded, ready to leave at midnight. Feet shuffled up long wooden gangplanks. A lot of songs were being sung. A lot of silent goodbyes were being said to New York Harbour. Military insignia flashed in the loading lights….
    Johnny Choir wasn’t afraid. His khaki-clad arms trembled with excitement and uncertainty, but he wasn’t afraid. He held onto the railing and thought. The thinking came down over him like a bright shell, cutting out the soldiers, the transport, the noise. He thought about the days that had slipped by him.
    A few years before—
    Days in the green park, down by the creek, under the shady oaks and elms, near the grey-planked benches and the bright flowers. The kids, he among them, came like an adolescent avalanche down the tall hillsides, yelling, laughing, tumbling.
    Sometimes they’d have carven hunks of wood with clothes-pins from the wash-line for triggers; rubber bands, snapped and flicked through the summer air, for ammunition. Sometimes they’d have cap-guns, exploding pointedly at one another. And most of the time when they couldn’t afford powder-caps, they just pointed their dime revolvers at one another and shouted:
    “Bang! You’re dead.”
    “Bang-bang—I gotcha!”
    It wasn’t simple as all that, though. Arguments rose, quick, hot, short, and over in a minute.
    “Bang, I gotcha!”
    “Aw, you missed me a mile! Boom! There, I got you!”
    “Oh, no you didn’t either! How could you get me? You were shot. You were dead. You couldn’t shoot me.”
    “I already said you missed me. I ducked.”
    “Aw, you can’t duck a bullet. I pointed right at you.”
    “I still ducked.”
    “Nuts. You always say that, Johnny. You don’t play right. You’re shot. You gotta lay down!”
    “But I’m the sergeant—I can’t die.”
    “Well, I’m better than a sergeant. I’m a captain.”
    “If you are a captain, then I’m a general!”
    “ I’m a major-general!”
    “I quit. You don’t play fair.”
    The eternal wrangling for position, the bloody noses and hoarse name-calling, the promised retribution of “I’ll tell my Dad on you”. All of it a part and parcel of being a wild horseling of eleven, with the bit out of your bucked-toothed mouth all during June and July and August.
    * * * *
    And only in autumn did the parents ride out after you and the other fiery colts, to rope you and brand you behind the ears with soap and water and chuck you off to that corral with the red-brick walls and the rusty bell in the tower….
    That wasn’t so long ago. Just—seven years.
    He was still a kid inside. His body had grown, stretched, towered, tanned its skin, hardened its muscle, darkened its tawny shock of long