"But my father neither wants to be married, sir, nor is he sick at all. I believe it is some matter of witnessing an oath."
"Hath he better than roast duck and green peas to offer, hey? No? Then tell him he may come and witness my oath, that I'll see him first to Jericho."
"Whereby, if I mistake not," said Mr. Knox, quietly, "your pocket will continue light of two guineas; and I may add, from what I know of Sir John Constantine, that he is quite capable, if he receive such an answer, of having your blood in a bottle."
"'Sir John Constantine?' did I hear you say. Sir John
Constantine?'" queried the Reverend Mr. Figg, with a complete change
of manner. "That's quite another thing! Anything to oblige Sir
John Constantine, I'm sure—"
"Do you know him?" asked my uncle.
"Well—er—no; I can't honestly declare that I know him; but, of course, one knows of him—that is to say, I understand him to be a gentleman of title; a knight at least."
"Yes," my uncle answered, "he is at least that. What a very extraordinary person!" he added in a wondering aside.
Oddly enough, as we were leaving, I heard the woman Nan say pretty much the same of my uncle. She added that she had a great mind to kiss him.
We found my father and the prisoner seated with the bottle between them on the rickety liquor-stained table. Yet—as I remember the scene now—not all the squalor of the room could efface or diminish the majesty of their two figures. They sat like two tall old kings, eye to eye, not friends, or reconciled only in this last and lonely hour by meditation on man's common fate. If I cannot make you understand this, what follows will seem to you absurd, though indeed at the time it was not so.
My father rose as we entered. "Here is the boy returned," said he; "and here are the witnesses."