“Didn't what?” said York gently; for the old man had stopped with a pale face and wandering eye.
“Eh?”
“You say when I said I had seen you in New York you thought”—
“You lie!” said the old man fiercely. “I didn't say I thought any thing. What are you trying to go back on me for, eh?” His hands were trembling as he rose muttering from the bed, and made his way toward the hearth.
“Gimme some whiskey,” he said presently “and dry up. You oughter treat anyway. Them fellows oughter treated last night. By hookey, I'd made 'em—only I fell sick.”
York placed the liquor and a tin cup on the table beside him, and, going to the door, turned his back upon his guest, and looked out on the night. Although it was clear moonlight, the familiar prospect never to him seemed so dreary. The dead waste of the broad Wingdam highway never seemed so monotonous, so like the days that he had passed, and were to come to him, so like the old man in its suggestion of going sometime, and never getting there. He turned, and going up to Plunkett put his hand upon his shoulder, and said,—
“I want you to answer one question fairly and squarely.”
The liquor seemed to have warmed the torpid blood in the old man's veins, and softened his acerbity; for the face he turned up to York was mellowed in its rugged outline, and more thoughtful in expression, as he said,—
“Go on, my boy.”
“Have you a wife and—daughter?”