"Wot! Hadn't---"
"A purely hypothetical case! If the sea gave up its dead"--Joe stirred uneasily--"any retraction on your part wouldn't serve him. In the first place, you wouldn't confess; then if you did--which you wouldn't--to employ the sort of Irish bull you yourself used--you would be discredited. And thus, in any contingency," leaning back with folded arms, his head against the wall, "you have become nil!"
"Blest if I follow you, sir!"
"That, also," said John Steele, "doesn't matter. The principal subject of any consequence, relating to you, is the steak, which is now coming." As he spoke, he rose, leaving Dandy Joe alone at the table.
For a time he did not speak; sitting before a cheerless fire, that feebly attempted to assert itself, he looked once or twice toward the door, as if mindful to go out and leave the place.
But for an inexplicable reason he did not do so; there was nothing to be gained here; yet he lingered. Perhaps one of those subtle, illusory influences we do not yet understand, and which sometimes shape the blundering finite will, mysteriously, without conscious volition, was at work. One about to stumble blindly forward, occasionally stops; why, he knows not.
John Steele continued to regard the dark coals; to divers and sundry sounds from the table where the other ate, he seemed oblivious. Once when the proprietor stepped in, he asked, without looking around, for a certain number of grains of quinine with a glass of water; they probably kept it at the bar. Yes, the man always had it on hand and brought it in.
A touch of fever, might he ask, as the visitor took it; nothing to speak of, was the indifferent answer.
Well, the gentleman should have a care; the gentleman did not reply except to ask for the reckoning; the proprietor figured a moment, then departed with the sovereign that had been tossed to the table.
By this time Dandy Joe had pushed back his chair; his dull eyes gleamed with satisfaction; also, perhaps, with a little calculation.