"What a fine thing it would have been for Mr. Downie Trevelyan if that rebel shot had been a little lower down—eh, Derrick?" said he, chuckling.
"Not while the proud old lord lived, for he ever loved my master best."
"But he is in possession now—and that, you know, is nine points of the law."
"Yes—and he has a heart as hard as Cornish granite," said Braddon, grinding his set teeth; "aye, hard as the Logan Stone of Treryn Dinas! Here is confusion to him and all such!" he added, energetically, as he drained the drugged tankard to the dregs; "if such a fellow were in the army, he'd be better known to the Provost Marshal than to the Colonel or Adjutant, and would soon find himself at shot-drill, with B.C. branded on his side. But here's Mr. Denzil's jolly good-health-and-hooray-for-the-Dooranee-Empire!" he continued, and applied the empty tankard mechanically to his lips, while his eyes began to roll, as the four corners of the room seemed to be in pursuit of each other round him. "I dreamt I was on the wreck last night—ugh! and saw the black fins of the sea-lawyers, sticking up all about us."
"Sea-lawyers—what may they be?"
"Sharks," replied Braddon, his eyes glaring with a curious expression, that hovered between fun and ferocity, at his companion, whose figure seemed suddenly to waver, and then to multiply.
"Ha, ha, very good; an old soldier must have his joke."
"So had my master, when he sat in the fur-ur-urrow made by the shell. You see, we were engaged with Canada rebels at Napierville—ville—yes exactly, at Naperville, when a twelve-pound shot——"
He was proceeding, with twitching mouth and thickened utterance, to relate the whole anecdote deliberately over again, when Sharkley, who saw that he was becoming so fatuously tipsy that further concealment was useless, rose impatiently, and abruptly left the room, to give the landlord some fresh hints for his future guidance.
"Halt! come back here—here, you sir—I say!" exclaimed Braddon, in a low, fierce, and husky voice, as this sudden and unexplained movement seemed to rouse all his suspicions and quicken his perceptive qualities; but in attempting to leave his chair he fell heavily on the floor.