"Hush!" said the captain, arousing, with a start. "The window is open, doors and walls have ears. You must drop that slang and talk like the character you assume, even when we are alone, for practice. Tell me what you have seen. Is the house large?"
"Enormous!" replied Starling, sinking his voice to a disagreeable hoarseness. "It is a reg'lar palace. Bigger than the pris——"
The captain sprang to his feet, his eyes blazing, and his face white.
"Idiot! keep that word between your teeth! We're working over a powder mine, and such a word as that means destruction. Forget the past; forget that you were ever anything else than my servant—Captain Murpoint's valet. If you don't, that idiot's tongue of yours will blab and spoil the whole."
He sat down again with something of his old coolness, but his hand, as it toyed with an ivory-backed brush, trembled, and his eyes still flashed evilly.
"All right, captain," pleaded Starling, humbly. "It was a slip," he laughed, "but it shan't occur again. Cuss me for an idiot. But I never can play a close game like this right away at first. It requires genius, and I ain't that, and you are, capt'n; and that's where the difference is——"
"Answer my question," said the captain, interrupting him with a gesture of weariness.
"The place is a regular gold mine," said Starling. "Heaps o' servants and cartloads o' plate. I never see such swag. Great, big plates and basins and ornaments and spoons and forks enough to set us up for life——"
The captain interrupted him with a contemptuous:
"Pshaw! Do you think I am going to steal the plate, idiot?"