This passage brought us to the door of Murdock’s house—a plain, strongly-built cottage, standing on a knoll of rock that cropped up from the plateau round it. It was surrounded with a garden hedged in by a belt of pollard ash and stunted alders.
Murdock had evidently been peering surreptitiously through the window of his sitting-room, for as we passed in by the gate he came out to the porch. His salutation was not an encouraging one:—
“You’re somethin’ late this mornin’, Mr. Sutherland. I hope ye didn’t throuble to delay in ordher to bring up this sthrange gintleman. Ye know how particular I am about any wan knowin’ aught of me affairs.”
Dick flushed up to the roots of his hair, and, much to my surprise, burst out quite in a passionate way:—
“Look you here, Mr. Murdock, I’m not going to take any cheek from you, so don’t you give any. Of course I don’t expect a fellow of your stamp to understand a gentleman’s feelings—damn it! how can you have a gentleman’s understanding when you haven’t even a man’s? You ought to know right well that what I said I would do, I shall do. I despise you and your miserable secrets and your miserable trickery too much to take to myself anything in which they have a part; but when I bring with me a friend, but for whom I shouldn’t have been here at all—for I couldn’t have walked—I expect that neither he nor I shall be insulted. For two pins I’d not set foot on your dirty ground again!”
Here Murdock interrupted him:—
“Aisy now! ye’re undher agreement to me; an’ I hould ye to it.”
“So you can, you miserable scoundrel, because you know I shall keep my word; but remember that I expect proper treatment; and remember, too, that if I want an assistant I am to have one.”
Again Murdock interrupted—but this time much more soothingly:
“Aisy! Aisy! haven’t I done every livin’ thing ye wanted—and helped ye meself every time? Sure arn’t I yer assistant?”