‘Compounding a felony! Catch me at it!’ cried the old man, with a yell.
‘Well, Joe Atlee will be here to-night,’ continued Dick. ‘He’s a clever fellow at all rogueries. Will you let him see if it can’t be arranged.’
‘I don’t care who does it, so it isn’t Mathew Kearney,’ said he angrily, for his patience could endure no more. ‘If you won’t leave me alone now, I won’t say but that I’ll go out and throw myself into a bog-hole!’
There was a tone of such perfect sincerity in his speech, that, without another word, Dick took the lawyer’s arm, and led him from the room.
A third voice was heard outside as they issued forth, and Kearney could just make out that it was Major Lockwood, who was asking Dick if he might have a few minutes’ conversation with his father.
‘I don’t suspect you’ll find my father much disposed for conversation just now. I think if you would not mind making your visit to him at another time—’
‘Just so!’ broke in the old man, ‘if you’re not coming with a strait-waistcoat, or a coil of rope to hold me down, I’d say it’s better to leave me to myself.’
Whether it was that the major was undeterred by these forbidding evidences, or that what he deemed the importance of his communication warranted some risk, certain it is he lingered at the door, and stood there where Dick and the lawyer had gone and left him.
A faint tap at the door at last apprised Kearney that some one was without, and he hastily, half angrily, cried, ‘Come in!’ Old Kearney almost started with surprise as the major walked in.
‘I’m not going to make any apology for intruding on you,’ cried he. ‘What I want to say shall be said in three words, and I cannot endure the suspense of not having them said and answered. I’ve had a whole night of feverish anxiety, and a worse morning, thinking and turning over the thing in my mind, and settled it must be at once, one way or other, for my head will not stand it.’