Buch lesen: «Roland Cashel, Volume II (of II)», Seite 15

CHAPTER XXI. THE SECOND SHOCK

 
The waters darken, and the rustling sound
Tells of the coming “squall.”
 

The Pilot.

Lord Kilgoff was stretched upon a bed, breathing heavily; one arm lay straight beside him, and the other crossed upon his breast. His features were deadly pale, save in the centre of each cheek, where a deep-red spot seemed to burn. A slight, very slight, distortion marked his features, and a faint tremor seemed to quiver on his lip. Beside the bed, with an expression of some conscious terror in her face, sat Lady Kilgoff; her white dressing-gown, over which her hair fell in long abundant masses, added pallor to her looks. Her eyes met Cashel’s as he entered, and then reverted to the bed where the sick man lay, but with an expression less of sorrow than of bewilderment and confusion.

She looked, indeed, like one whose faculties had been stunned by some sudden shock, and had, as yet, made no effort to recall them to their wonted exercise. At the foot of the bed stood the maid, whose half-uttered sobs were the only sounds to break the stillness.

Cashel drew near, and placed his fingers on the sick man’s pulse. Often had he, in his former adventurous career, felt the ebbing current of a life’s blood, and measured its power by its resistance. The full but laboring swell of the heart might well deceive him, then, into the impression that no grave consequences were near. He knew not that in such affections the pulse can be round and strong and impulsive; and it was with an earnest conviction of truth he whispered to her, —

“There is no danger.”

She looked up, but it was easy to see that although the words had sounded like comfort, they had not pierced the dense veil that clouded her mind.

Cashel repeated the phrase, and said, —

“Tiernay will soon be here, but have no fears; my own slight skill can tell you there is nothing of peril. Had you not better retire from this – even to the window?”

A faint “No” was all she uttered.

“He was in perfect health this afternoon?” said Cashel to the maid.

“My Lord was better than usual, sir; he took out his collar and his star to look at them, and he spoke very pleasantly of going abroad in the spring. He was reading in the library when Mr. Linton went to him.”

“Linton!” muttered Lady Kilgoff, with a shudder.

“I think I hear voices in the corridor,” said Cashel. “If it be the doctor, say I wish to speak with him before he sees my Lord.”

The maid left the room to perform the commission, and scarcely had the door closed, than Lady Kilgoff started up, and seizing an object which lay on the bed, exclaimed, “How came it in your keeping?”

“What?” cried Cashel, in amazement

“This bracelet,” said she, holding out towards him the massive bracelet which Linton had contrived to detach from her arm at their meeting in the “Park.”

“I never saw it before – never in my life.”

She sank slowly back upon the chair without speaking, while a faint tremor shook her frame.

“The doctor is without, sir,” said the maid at this moment, and Cashel hastened out. He spoke a few hurried words to Tiernay, and then walked towards his own room. That some deep and artful treachery had drawn its web around and about him, involving not himself alone, but another too, he now clearly felt. He saw danger, as the sailor sees it in the lowering sky and fleeting scud, but as yet he knew not from what quarter the “squall” was coming. His suspicions all pointed to Linton; but why attribute such a game to him? and if such were his purpose, to what end could be practise this treachery?

“Would it not be better,” thought he, “to see him at once; tell him my suspicions openly; say, that I no longer trust him as my friend, but feel towards him the misgivings of a secret enemy? If there is manliness about him, he will avow his enmity, or resent my distrust; either or both would be a relief to what I now suffer. Ah! here he comes,” said he; but he was deceived; it was Tiernay entered.

“What say you, doctor? Is the case a grave one?”

“Worse; it is nearly hopeless!”

“What! do you fear for his life?”

“Life or intellect, one or the other, must pay the penalty. This is the second shock. The shipwreck gave the first, and rent the poor edifice almost in twain; this will, in all likelihood, lay it in ashes.”

“This is very dreadful!” said Cashel, upon whom the attendant event and the consequences were weighing heavily.

“He has told me all!” said Tiernay, almost sternly. “His jealousy and her levity, the rampant pride of station, the reckless freedom of a broken heart, – such are the ingredients that have made up a sad story, which may soon become a tragedy.”

“But there was no reason for it; his jealousy was absurd – unfounded.”

“As you will. You may go further, and say he could not lose what he never owned. I saw the peril – I even warned you of it.”

“I can only comprehend you by half,” said Cashel, impatiently. “You imply blame to me where I can feel none.”

“I blame you as I will ever do those who, not fearing danger for themselves, are as indifferent about their neighbors. It is not of this silly old man I am thinking here, – it is of her who, without a protector, should have found one in every man of generous and honorable feeling; not as you, perhaps, understand protection, – not by the challenge hurled in the face of all who would dare to asperse her fair name, but by that studied respect, that hallowed deference, that should avert detraction. Neither you nor any other could be the champion of her honor; but you might have been its defender by a better and a nobler heroism. It is too late to think of this now; let us not lose time in vain regrets. We must take measures that ungenerous reports should not be circulated.”

The door suddenly opened at the instant, and Linton, in his dressing-gown, entered; but, seeing Tiernay, made a motion to retire.

“Come in,” said Cashel; and there was something almost peremptory in the words.

“I feared I might prove an intruder, seeing the doctor here. Is it true what my servant says, that Kilgoff is dangerously ill?”

Cashel nodded.

“Poor fellow! he has no command over himself in those paroxysms of passion, which his folly and vanity are so constantly stirring up. But is the case serious?”

“He will scarcely recover, sir,” said Tiernay; “and it was because my functions as a physician can be of so little benefit, that I ventured to offer my services as a friend in the case, and give some counsel as to what should be done.”

“Most considerate, indeed,” said Linton, but in an accent at once impossible to say whether ironical or the reverse.

“I said, sir,” resumed Tiernay, “that it would be becoming that no false representation should obtain currency as to the origin of the illness, nor that a momentary excitement of a feeble intellect should be assumed as the settled conviction of a sound mind. My Lord Kilgoff has had something like altercation with his wife, and being a weak and failing man, with breaking faculties, has been seized with a paralytic attack.”

“Very thoughtful, all this,” said Linton, gravely; “pray command me in any part of your plan where I may be serviceable.”

“The plan is this,” said Cashel: “here is a case where a terrible calamity has befallen, and which can be made worse only by calumny. To make the slanderer pay the heaviest penalty of his infamy – ”

“Nay, nay; this is not our plan,” said Tiernay, gently. “Lord Kilgoff’s attack must be spoken of without connection with any circumstances which preceded it this evening. Nothing was more likely to occur than such a seizure; his age, his late illness, his peculiar habit, all predisposed to it.”

“Just so,” interposed Cashel, hastily; “and as none, save you, Linton, and myself, know anything of the matter, it need never gain wider publicity.”

“Of course nothing can be easier than this. The Lady ‘Janets’ need never hear a word more than you choose to tell them,” said Linton.

“In a few days he will bear removal. Change will be necessary for him; and, in fact, our caution is, doubtless, greater than the necessity warrants,” added Tiernay.

“You will, of course, leave everything to take its course in the house?” said Linton. “To interfere with all the plans of pleasure would be to give rise to malicious rumors.”

“I scarcely know how to act,” said Cashel. “It looks unfeeling and unkind that we should give ourselves up to gayety at such a moment.”

“Mr. Linton’s counsel may be wise, notwithstanding,” said Tiernay. “His Lordship may continue a long time in his present state.”

“Exactly what I mean,” said Linton. “He will probably linger on, unchanged; so that if events follow their habitual train, there will be little time or temptation to spread scandal about him; and then, what, at first blush, seems to lack kindness, is, in reality, the very truest and most considerate service we can render.”

“Then you will look to this part of the matter, Linton?” said Cashel, on whom his apparent frankness had resumed its former ascendancy.

“Leave it all to me,” said he; “and so good-night.” And, with that, he departed, leaving Cashel and Tiernay together.

They were silent for some minutes, as Linton’s retiring steps were heard going towards his own room. Soon after the loud bang of a door resounded through the house, and all was still. Little knew they, that scarcely had he gained his room than he left it noiselessly, and, slipping down the great stairs, crossed the hall, and, entering the theatre, proceeded by the secret passage which led to Cashel’s dressing-room, and through the thin panel that covered which, he could easily overhear whatever was spoken within.

“At least you will allow that he has been candid with us here?” said Cashel, in a tone of remonstrance.

“I cannot afford to give a man my confidence, because I am unable to sound his intentions,” said Tiernay. “I disliked this Linton from the first, and I never yet saw any distinct reason to alter the sentiment. That he has puzzled me – ay, completely puzzled me and all my calculations, within the last few days, is quite true. He has done that which, in a man like himself, disconcerts one altogether, because it is so difficult to trace his probable motive. What would you say, were I to tell you that this deep man of the world, this artful and subtle gambler in the game of life, has actually proposed for a girl who is utterly without fortune or family influence? That she is endowed with noble attributes – that she is one a prince might have chosen to share his fortunes, I deem as nothing to the purpose, for I cannot conceive such qualities as hers could weigh with him; but so it is, – he has actually made an offer of his hand.”

“Dare your confidence go further?” said Cashel, eagerly, “and tell me – to whom?”

“Yes. I have been guilty of one breach of faith in telling you so much, and I ‘ll hazard all, and let you hear the remainder. It was Mary Leicester.”

“Mary Leicester!” echoed Cashel, but in a voice barely audible.

“Mary Leicester,” continued Tiernay, “may count it among her triumphs to have attracted one whom all the world regards as an adventurer; a man living by the exercise of his clever wits, profiting by the weaknesses and follies of his acquaintances, and deriving his subsistence from the vices he knows how to pamper.”

“And what answer has he received?” asked Cashel, timidly.

“None, as yet. Poor Corrigan, overwhelmed by misfortune, threatened by one whose menace, if enforced, would be his death-stroke, has begged for a day or two to consider; but the reply is certain.”

“And will be – ” Cashel could not command his emotion as he spoke.

“Refusal.”

“You are certain of this, Tiernay? You are positive of what you say?”

“I know it. My old friend, were, he even inclined to this alliance, could never coerce her; and Mary Leicester has long since learned to distinguish between the agreeable qualities of a clever man and the artful devices of a treacherous one. She knows him; she reads him thoroughly, and as thoroughly she despises him. I will not say that her impressions have been unaided; she received more than one letter from a kind friend – Lady Kilgoff; and these were her first warnings. Poor Corrigan knows nothing of this; and Mary, seeing how Linton’s society was pleasurable to the old man, actually shrank from the task of undeceiving him. ‘He has so few pleasures,’ said she to me one evening; ‘why deny him this one?’ – ‘It is a poison which cannot injure in small doses, doctor,’ added she, another time; and so, half jestingly, she reasoned, submitting to an intimacy that was odious to her, because it added a gleam of comfort to the chill twilight of his declining life.”

“And you are sure of this – you are certain she will refuse him?” cried Cashel, eagerly.

“I am her confidant,” said Tiernay; “and you see how worthily I repay the trust! Nay, nay! I would not tell these things to any other living; but I feel that I owe them to you. I have seen more misery in life from concealment, from the delicacy that shuns a frank avowal, than from all the falsehood that ever blackened a bad heart. Mary has told me all her secrets; ay – don’t blush so deeply – and some of yours also.”

Cashel did indeed grow red at this speech, and, in his effort to conceal his shame, assumed an air of dissatisfaction.

“Not so, my dear young friend,” said Tiernay; “I did not mean to say one word which could offend you. Mary has indeed trusted me with the secret nearest to her heart She has told me of the proudest moment of her life.”

“When she rejected me?” said Cashel, bitterly.

“So was it – when she rejected you,” re-echoed Tiernay. “When poor, she refused wealth; when friendless in all that friendship can profit, she declined protection; when almost homeless, she refused a home; when sought by one whom alone of all the world she preferred, she said him nay! It was at that moment of self-sacrifice, when she abandoned every thought of present happiness and of future hope, and devoted herself to one humble but holy duty, she felt the ecstasy of a martyr’s triumph. You may think that these are exaggerations, and that I reckon at too exalted a standard such evidences of affection, but I do not think so. I believe that there is more courage in the patient submission to an obscure and unnoticed fortune, beset with daily trials and privations, than in braving the stake or the scaffold, with human sympathies to exalt the sacrifice.”

“But I offered to share this duty with her; to be a son to him whom she regarded as a father.”

“How little you know of the cares – the thoughtful, watchful, anxious cares – you were willing to share! You could give wealth and splendor, it is true; you could confer all the blandishments of fortune, all the luxuries that rich men command; but one hour of gentle solicitude in sickness – one kind look, that recalled years of tenderness – one accustomed service, the tribute of affection – were worth all that gold could purchase, told ten times over. And these are not to be acquired; they are the instincts that, born in childhood, grow strong with years, till at length they form that atmosphere of love in which parents live among their children. No! Mary felt that it were a treason to rob her poor old grandfather of even a thought that should be his.”

“But, I repeat it,” cried Cashel, passionately, “I would participate in every care; I would share her duties, as she should share my fortunes.”

“And what guarantee did you give for your fitness to such a task?” said Tiernay. “Was it by your life of pleasure, a career of wild and wasteful extravagance – was it by the unbridled freedom with which you followed every impulse of your will – was it by the example your friendships exhibited – was it by an indiscriminating generosity, that only throws a shade over better-regulated munificence, you would show that you were suited to a life of unobtrusive, humble duties?”

“You wrong me,” said Cashel. “I would have lived in that cottage yonder, without a thought or a wish for the costly pleasures you think have such attractions for me.”

“You had already sold it to your friend.”

“Sold it I – never! – to whom?”

“I thought Linton had purchased it.”

“Never!”

“Well, you gave it as a gift?”

“I did intend to do so; but seeing the value Corrigan puts upon it, I will give Linton double – thrice the value, rather than part with it.”

“What if he refuse?”

“He will not. Linton’s fancies never run counter to solid advantages. A thousand pounds, with him, is always twice five hundred, come with what condition it may.”

“But Linton may, for his own reasons, think differently here; his proposal to marry seems as though it were part of some settled plan; and if you have already given him a legal claim here, my opinion is that he will uphold it.”

“That I have never done; but my word is pledged, and to it he may hold me, if he will. Meanwhile, I have seen Kennyfeck this morning. The man Hoare has offered us a large sum on mortgage, and I have promised to meet them both the day after to-morrow. If I read Tom aright, £10,000 will free me from every claim he has upon me.”

“A heavy sum, but not ill spent if it liberate you from his friendship,” cried Tiernay, eagerly.

“And so it shall.”

“You promise me this – you give me your word upon it?”

“I do.”

“Then there are good days in store for you. That man’s intimacy has been your bane; even when you thought least of it, his influence swayed your actions and perverted your motives. Under the shadow of his evil counsels your judgment grew warped and corrupted; you saw all things in a false and distorted light; and your most fatal error of all was, that you deemed yourself a ‘gentleman.’”

“I have done with him forever,” said Cashel, with slow, deliberate utterance.

“Again I say, good days are in store for you,” said Tiernay.

“I cannot live a life of daily, hourly distrust,” said Cashel; “nor will I try it. I will see him to-morrow; I will tell him frankly that I am weary of his fashionable protectorate; that as a scholar in modish tastes I should never do him credit, and that we must part. Our alliance was ever a factitious one; it will not be hard to sever it.”

“You mistake much,” said Tiernay; “the partnership will not be so easily relinquished by him who reaps all the profit.”

“You read me only as a dupe,” said Cashel, fiercely.

Tiernay made no reply, but waving his hand in adieu, left the room.

CHAPTER XXII. LINTON INSTIGATES KEANE TO MURDER

Hell’s eloquence – “Temptation!”

Harold

Tom Keane, the gatekeeper, sat moodily at his door on the morning after the events recorded in our last chapter. His reflections seemed of the gloomiest, and absorbed him so completely that he never noticed the mounted groom, who, despatched to seek the doctor for Lord Kilgoff, twice summoned him in vain to open the gate.

“Halloa!” cried the smartly equipped servant, “stupid! will you open that gate, I say?”

“It ‘s not locked,” said Tom, looking up, but without the slightest indication of obeying the request.

“Don’t you see the mare won’t stand?” cried he, with an oath.

Tom smoked away without replying.

“Sulky brute you are!” cried the groom; “I ‘m glad we ‘re to see the last of you soon.”

With this he managed to open the gate and pass on his way.

“So it’s for turnin’ me out yez are,” said Tom to himself; “turnin’ me out on the road – to starve, or maybe – to rob” – (these words were uttered between the puffs of his tobacco-smoke) – “after forty years in the same place.”

The shrill barking of a cur-dog, an animal that in spitefulness as in mangy condition seemed no bad type of its master, now aroused him, and Tom muttered, “Bite him, Blaze! hould him fast, yer soule!”

“Call off your dog, Keane – call him off!” cried out a voice whose tones at once bespoke a person of condition; and at the same instant Linton appeared. “You’d better fasten him up, for I feel much tempted to ballast his heart with a bullet.”

And he showed a pistol which he held at full cock in his fingers.

“Faix, ye may shoot him for all I care,” said Tom; “he’s losing his teeth, and won’t be worth a ‘trawneen’ ‘fore long. Go in there – into the house,” cried he, sulkily; and the animal shrank away, craven and cowed.

“You ought to keep him tied up,” said Linton; “every one complains of him.”

“So I hear,” said Tom, with a low, sardonic laugh; “he used only to bite the beggars, but he’s begun now to be wicked with the gentlemen. I suppose he finds they taste mighty near alike.”

“Just so,” said Linton, laughing; “if the cur could speak, he ‘d tell us a laborer was as tender as ‘my lord.’ I’ve come over to see you,” added he, after a moment’s pause, “and to say that I ‘m sorry to have failed in my undertaking regarding you; they are determined to turn you out.”

“I was thinking so,” said Tom, moodily.

“I did my best. I told them you had been many years on the estate – ”

“Forty-two.”

“Just so. I said forty and upwards – that your children had grown up on it – that you were actually like a part of the property. I spoke of the hardship of turning a man at your time of life, with a helpless family too, upon the wide world. I even went so far as to say that these were not the times for such examples; that there was a spirit abroad of regard for the poor man, a watchful inquiry into the evils of his condition, that made these 4 clearances,’ as they call them, unwise and impolitic, as well as cruel.”

“An’ what did they say to that?” asked Tom, abruptly.

“Laughed – laughed heartily.”

“They laughed?”

“No – I am wrong,” said Linton, quickly. “Kennyfeck did not laugh; on the contrary, he seemed grave, and observed that up at Drumcoologan – is there such a name?”

“Ay, and nice boys they ‘re in it,” said Tom, nodding.

“‘Well, up at Drumcoologan,’ said he, ‘such a step would be more than dangerous.’

“‘How do you mean?’ said Mr. Cashel.

“‘They ‘d take the law into their own hands,’ replied Kennyfeck. The man who would evict one of those fellows might as well make his will, if he wished to leave one behind him. They are determined fellows, whose fathers and grandfathers have lived and died on the land, and find it rather hard to understand how a bit of parchment with a big seal on it should have more force than kith and kindred.”

“Did ould Kennyfeck say that?” asked Tom, with a glance of unutterable cunning.

“No,” replied Linton; “that observation was mine, for really I was indignant at that summary system which disposes of a population as coolly as men change the cattle from one pasturage to another. Mr. Cashel, however, contented himself with a laugh, and such a laugh as, for his sake, I am right glad none of his unhappy tenantry were witness to.”

“‘You may do as you please down here, sir,’ said Kenny-feck – who, by the way, does not seem to be any friend of yours – ‘but the Drumcoologan fellows must be humored.’

“‘I will see that,’ said Mr. Cashel, who, in his own hotheaded way, actually likes opposition, ‘but we ‘ll certainly begin with this fellow Keane.’

“‘I suppose you’ll give him the means to emigrate?’ said I, addressing Kennyfeck.

“‘We generally do in these cases,’ said he.

“‘I’ll not give the scoundrel a farthing,’ broke in Mr. Cashel. ‘I took a dislike to him from the very hour I came here.’ And then he went on to speak about the dirt and neglect about the gate-lodge, the ragged appearance of the children – even your own looks displeased him; in fact, I saw plainly that somehow you had contrived to make him your enemy, not merely of a few days’ standing, but actually from the moment of his first meeting you. Kennyfeck, though not your friend, behaved better than I expected: he said that to turn you out was to leave you to starve; that there was no employment to be had in the country; that your children were all young and helpless; that you were not accustomed to daily labor; indeed, he made out your case to be a very hard one, and backed as it was by myself, I hoped that we should have succeeded; but, as I said before, Mr. Cashel, for some reason of his own, or perhaps without any reason, hates you. He has resolved that out you shall go, and go you must!”

Keane said nothing, but sat moodily moving his foot backwards and forwards on the gravel.

“For Mr. Cashel’s sake, I ‘m not sorry the lot has fallen upon a quiet-tempered fellow like yourself; there are plenty here who would n’t bear the hardship so patiently.”

Keane looked up, and the keen twinkle of his gray eyes seemed to read the other’s very thoughts. Linton, so proof against the searching glances of the well-bred world, actually cowered under the vulgar stare of the peasant.

“So you think he’s lucky that I ‘m not one of the Drumcoologan boys?” said Keane; and his features assumed a smile of almost insolent meaning.

“They’re bold fellows, I’ve heard,” said Linton, “and quick to resent an injury.”

“Maybe there’s others just as ready,” said he, doggedly.

“Many are ready to feel one,” said Linton; “that I’m well aware of. The difference is that some men sit down under their sorrows, crestfallen and beaten; others rise above them, and make their injuries the road to fortune. And really, much as people say against this ‘wild justice’ of the people, when we consider they have no other possible – that the law is ever against them – that their own right hand alone is their defence against oppression – one cannot wonder that many a tyrant landlord falls beneath the stroke of the ruined tenant, and particularly when the tyranny dies with the tyrant.”

Keane listened greedily, but spoke not; and Linton went on, —

“It so often happens that, as in the present case, by the death of one man, the estate gets into Chancery; and then it’s nobody’s affair who pays and who does not. Tenants then have as mach right as the landlord used to have. As the rents have no owner, there’s little trouble taken to collect them; and when any one makes a bold stand and refuses to pay, they let him alone, and just turn upon the others that are easier to deal with.”

“That’s the way it used to be here long ago,” said Keane.

“Precisely so. You remember it yourself, before Mr. Cashel’s time; and so it might be again, if he should try any harsh measures with those Drumcoologan fellows. Let me light my cigar from your pipe, Keane,” said he; and, as he spoke, he laid down the pistol which he had still carried in his hand. Keane’s eyes rested on the handsome weapon with an expression of stern intensity.

“Cashel would think twice of going up to that mountain barony to-morrow, if he but knew the price that lies upon his head. The hundreds of acres that to-day are a support to as many people, and this day twelvemonth, perhaps, may lie barren and waste; while the poor peasants that once settled there have died of hunger, or wander friendless and houseless in some far-away country – and all this to depend on the keen eye and the steady hand of any one man brave enough to pull a trigger!”

“Is he going to Drumcoologan to-morrow?” asked Keane, dryly.

“Yes; he is to meet Kennyfeck there, and go over the property with him, and on Tuesday evening he is to return here. Perhaps I may be able to put in another word for you, Tom, but I half fear it is hopeless.”

“‘T is a lonely road that leads from Sheehan’s Mill to the ould churchyard,” said Keane, more bent upon following out his own fancies than in attending to Linton.

“So I believe,” said Linton; “but Mr. Cashel cares little for its solitude; he rides always without a servant, and so little does he fear danger, that he never goes armed.”

“I heard that afore,” observed Tom, significantly.

“I have often remonstrated with him about it,” said Linton. “I ‘ve said, ‘Remember how many there are interested in your downfall. One bullet through your forehead is a lease forever, rent free, to many a man whose life is now one of grinding poverty.’ But he is self-willed and obstinate. In his pride, he thinks himself a match for any man – as if a rifle-bore and a percussion-lock like that, there, did not make the merest boy his equal! Besides, he will not bear in mind that his is a life exposed to a thousand risks; he has neither family nor connections interested in him; were he to be found dead on the roadside to-morrow, there is neither father nor brother, nor uncle nor cousin, to take up the inquiry how he met his fate. The coroner would earn his guinea or two, and there would be the end of it!”

“Did he ever do you a bad turn, Mr. Linton?” asked Keane, while he fixed his cold eyes on Linton with a stare of insolent effrontery.

“Me! injure me? Never. He would have shown me many a favor, but I would not accept of such. How came you to ask this question?”

“Because you seem so interested about his comin’ home safe to-morrow evening,” said Tom, with a dry laugh.

“So I am!” said Linton, with a smile of strange meaning.

“An’ if he was to come to harm, sorry as you ‘ll be, you couldn’t help it, sir?” said Keane, still laughing.

“Of course not; these mishaps are occurring every day, and will continue as long as the country remains in its present state of wretchedness.”

Keane seemed to ponder over the last words, for he slouched his hat over his eyes, and sat with clasped hands and bent-down head for several minutes in silence. At last he spoke, but it was in a tone and with a manner whose earnestness contrasted strongly with his former levity.

“Can’t we speak openly, Mr. Linton, would n’t it be best for both of us to say fairly what’s inside of us this minit?”

“I ‘m perfectly ready,” said Linton, seating himself beside him; “I do not desire anything better than to show my confidence in a man of courage like yourself.”

“Then let us not be losin’ our time,” said the other, gruffly. “What’s the job worth? that’s the chat. What is it worth?”

“You are certainly a most practical speaker,” said Linton, laughing in his own peculiar way, “and clear away preliminaries in a very summary fashion.”

“If I’m not worth trustin’ now,” replied the other, doggedly, “ye ‘d betther have nothin’ to say to me.”

“I did not mean that, nor anything like it, Tom. I was only alluding to your straightforward, business-like way of treating a subject which less vigorously minded men would approach timidly and carefully.”