“I suppose it’s not a job within the reach of the likes of me?” hazarded Mr Bartley. “I wouldn’t mind a warm climate at all, and I wouldn’t mind a change. My chance is gone—I feel that. Ever since the affair of Daniel Sweetland—”
“You was hookwinked in company.”
“That don’t make it better. And Corder be in high favour again—just because he catched that chap as killed his wife to Ashburton. To think Sweetland didn’t jump down Wall Shaft Gully after all! A crafty soul, a very first-rate rascal.”
“Don’t you speak like that,” said Sim, sharply. “Sweetland’s gone; but I ban’t, and ’tis pretty well known we were better than brothers. ’Twasn’t him that was crafty, but you and t’others that were fools. His craft got him free, and he died like a man in the hand of God, not like a dog in the hand of man. I am speaking of your son, Matthew,” he continued, for at that moment Sweetland the elder had entered the bar. He was grey, silent, morose as usual. Upon his left arm he wore a mourning band.
“Can’t his name rest? Ban’t it enough he’s gone to answer for his short life, an’ taken the secrets of it along with him?” asked the father. “A drop of gin cold,” he added; then he turned and looked at the tall, dumb Ethiopian who was regarding him.
“God’s truth!” he said harshly, “if that savage ban’t built the very daps of my dead boy—the very daps of un, if he wasn’t black!”
The others regarded the stranger critically, and “Obi” grinned about him and tapped his glass again. But Sim shook his head.
“No more, my lad. You must be moving soon. He’s Mister Henry’s servant,” he continued to Sweetland—“a poor, simple, afflicted creature, but true and faithful; and wonderful smart, seeing he can’t hear or speak. He saved Mister Henry’s life in some row he had in foreign parts, and now he’s thought the world of. Providence was looking after him, I reckon. He’ll drive the new motor so like as not, if it can be proved his deafness don’t matter.”
Sweetland still regarded the coloured man with interest. Then he turned to his glass. Presently he spoke to Beer.