Learmont had latterly looked upon Andrew with mixed feelings of dread and exultation—dread that he might drink himself to death some day and leave behind him ample written evidence to convict him, Learmont, of heavy crimes—and exultation that all the money the savage smith wrung from his fears was converted into the means of his destruction by his habit of habitual intoxication.
When they now met, Learmont forgot for a moment his personal danger in eager notice of the trembling hand and generally decayed state of the smith’s once hardy frame. But he forgot at the same time that anxiety and the constant gnawing of conscience were making even more rapid ravages upon his own constitution than the utmost stretch of intemperance could have done.
Britton was pale, and in some degree emaciated; but Learmont was positively ghastly, and had wasted nearly to a skeleton.
“Well,” said Learmont, in a hollow and constrained voice, “you come, as usual, for more money, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Britton,—“I don’t mean to go away empty-handed squire, you may take your oath; but I have something more to say on this visit.”
“Say it; and begone! I—I—am busy.”
“Are you? Perhaps you will be busier still some day. Do you happen to be thirsty?”
“No!” said Learmont impatiently.
“That’s a pity, because I am; and if it wasn’t for the look of the thing, drinking by one’s self, I’d have a glass of something.”
“Andrew—Britton,” said Learmont, jerking out his words slowly from beneath his clenched teeth; “I have warned you more than once before not to trifle with me. Your errand here is specific; you come for the means of carrying on a life of mad riot and intoxication—a life which some of these days may lead you to an excess which will plunge you, and all connected with you, in one common ruin.”