"Don't!" said Mr. Dashwood. "Don't mention tinned meat or biscuits to me. I've lived on them. Oh, heavens! don't let me think of it!"
"An egg?"
"Yes, an egg—anything but tinned meat. It's almost as bad as Giveen."
In five minutes the egg was boiled, and half an hour after Mr. Dashwood, young again, smoking a pipe of French's, began his recital.
He told all we know—how he had "shanghaied" Mr. Giveen, how that gentleman had tried to escape, and had stuck in the window. "I pulled and hauled," said Bobby, "but it was all no use; and, upon my Sam! I thought it would be a business of pulling the cottage down."
"How did you get him loose at last?" asked French. "And why the deuce didn't you leave him stuck there till the race was over? You could have fed him from the outside."
"Upon my soul, I never thought of that!" said Mr. Dashwood. "I felt I had to get him free somehow, and then I thought of a patent dodge. I'd heard of a chap lighting a fire of straw under a horse that wouldn't go, and I knew the only way to free the beggar was to make him use all his exertions, and even more; so I got some straw out of the outhouse place and made a big wisp of it, and lit it. Made a torch, you know. 'What are you doing?' he said. 'You wait and see,' I replied, and jabbed it in his face. You wouldn't believe it, but he went in 'pop' like when you push a cork down into a bottle. Then I ran round and secured him.
"Well, I pointed out to him next morning the error of his ways, and he promised to make no more attempts to escape. 'Look here,' said I, 'I've been pretending to you I was cracked. I'm not. I just got you down here because I'm a friend of French, and I don't want you to set Lewis on him, and here you'll stay till I choose to let you loose. It's as bad for me as you—worse, for you're a beastly slow companion. Anyhow, here you are, and here you'll stick till I give you leave to go.'
"At that he began saying that he had no enmity to you at all, and that if I'd only let him loose he'd go back to Ireland and make no more trouble; but I told him straight out I wouldn't trust him, and there the matter ended. I had written a letter to you, and I had it in my pocket. A half-witted sort of boy came round the place, and I gave him the letter and sixpence to post it. Did you get it?"