I muttered out some unmeaning words—I know not well what—about duty and the like.
“I don't care a brass button for the motive. You stood to me like a man.” As he said this, he looked hard at me, and, shading the light with his hand, peered into my face. “Have n't we met before this? Is not your name Potts?”
“Yes, and you're Harpar.”
He reddened, but so slightly that but for the previous paleness of his sickly cheek it would not have been noticeable.
“I have often thought about you.” said he, musingly. “This is not the only service you have done me; the first was at Lindau,—mayhap you have forgotten it. You lent me two hundred florins, and, if I 'm not much mistaken, when you were far from being rich yourself.”
He leaned his head on his hand, and seemed to have fallen into a musing fit.
“And, after all,” said I, “of the best turn I ever did you, you have never heard in your life, and, what is more, might never hear, if not from myself. Do you remember an altercation on the road to Feldkirch, with a man called Rigges?”
“To be sure I do; he smashed the small-bone of this arm for me; but I gave worse than I got. They never could find that bullet I sent into his side, and he died of it at Palermo. But what share in this did you bear?”
“Not the worst nor the best; but I was imprisoned for a twelvemonth in your place.”
“Imprisoned for me?”