"Hello, parson—sick?"
"Sick? Sick nothing," said Barrett, "except sick to death of this place. And don't 'parson' me! I'm 'parson' on Sundays; the rest of the six days I'm Tom Barrett—Tom, if you like."
We were dead silent. For myself, I thought the fellow clean crazy; but the next moment he had turned half around, and with a quick, soft, coaxing movement, for all the world like a woman, he slipped his arm around Jake's shoulders, and said, "Say, Jake, don't let the fellows mind me," Then in a lower tone—"What have you got to drink?"
Jake went white-looking and began to talk of some cider he'd got in the cellar; but Barrett interrupted with, "Look here, Jake, just drop that rot; I know all about you." He tipped a half wink at the rest of us, but laid his fingers across his lips. "Come, old man," he wheedled like a girl, "you don't know what it is to be dragged away from college and buried alive in this Indian bush. The governor's good enough, you know—treats me white and all that—but you know what he is on whiskey. I tell you I've got a throat as long and dry as a fence rail—"
No one spoke.
"You'll save my life if you do," he added, crushing a bank note into Jake's hand.
Jake looked at me. The same thought flashed on us both; if we could get this church student on our side—Well! Things would be easy enough and public suspicion never touch us. Jake turned, resurrected the hidden cups, and went down cellar.
"You're Dan McLeod, aren't you?" suggested Barrett, leaning across the table and looking sharply at me.
"That's me," I said in turn, and sized him up. I didn't like his face; it was the undeniable face of a liar—small, uncertain eyes, set together close like those of a fox, a thin nose, a narrow, womanish chin that accorded with his girlish actions of coaxing, and a mouth I didn't quite understand.
Jake had come up with the bottle, but before he could put it on the table Barrett snatched it like a starving dog would a hunk of meat.