Both stood still, each fixedly regarding the other without speaking. It seemed a game in which he who made the first move should lose. So, certainly, did Linton feel; but not so Tom Keane, who, with an easy composure that all the other's “breeding” could not compass, said,—
“Well, sir, I hope you like your work?”
“My work! my work! How can you call it mine, my good friend?” replied Linton, with a great effort to appear as much at ease as the other.
“Just as ould Con Corrigan built the little pier we're standin' on this minit, though his own hands did n't lay a stone of it.”
“There's no similarity between the cases whatever,” said Linton, with a well-feigned laugh. “Here there was a plan—an employer—hired laborers engaged to perform a certain task.”
“Well, well,” broke in Keane, impatiently; “sure we're not in 'Coort,' that you need make a speech. 'T was your own doing: deny it if you like, but don't drive me to prove it.”
The tone of menace in which these words were uttered was increased by the fact, now for the first time apparent to Linton, that Tom Keane had been drinking freely that morning, and was still under the strong excitement of liquor.
Linton passed his arm familiarly within the other's, and in a voice of deep meaning, said: “Were you only as cautious as you are courageous, Tom, there's not a man in Europe I 'd rather take as my partner in a dangerous enterprise. You are a glorious fellow in the hour of peril, but you are a child, a mere child, when it's over.”
Keane did not speak, but a leer of inveterate cunning seemed to answer this speech.
“I say this, Tom,” said Linton, coaxingly, “because I see the risk to which your natural frankness will expose you. There are fellows prowling about on every side to scrape up information about this affair; and as, in some unguarded moment, when a glass too much has made the tongue run freely, any man may say things, to explain which away afterwards he is often led to go too far—You understand me, Tom?”