“You don’t smoke tobacco!” said Sir John.
“No, I doan’t! An’ wot be that t’ you? Why should I smoke? I doan’t loike smoke an’ I bean’t a-goin’ to smoke! Not for the loikes o’ you, no—nor no man breathin’, I ain’t!”
“Perchance you prefer snuff?” Sir John suggested, finger and thumb in waistcoat pocket.
“An’ wot if I do? I ain’t beggin’ an’ pleadin’—no, nor yet axin’ you for any, be I?”
“No,” answered Sir John; “but you may have a pinch for good-fellowship’s sake, none the less, if you’re so minded.”
“Well, s’posin’ I be so minded?”
“Then I make you welcome to my box.” And Sir John took snuff-box from pocket and gave it to the red-haired man’s hairy fingers.
The box was shut, and in the act of opening it Jonas Skag grew suddenly still, glaring down at the thing he held, speechless, motionless, scarce breathing, as if indeed it had possessed some deadly power to blast him as he sat; then he seemed to shrink in his clothes, his writhing lips opened, closed again speechlessly, and slipping from his twitching fingers the battered horn snuff-box rolled upon the tiled floor; even then he stared down at it where it lay, until moving slowly like an old man, he leaned down, shaking hand outstretched. But with an airy motion of his riding-whip, Sir John flicked it from his reach and picking it up slipped it back into his pocket.
With the same unnatural slowness Jonas Skag rose to his feet, and leaning across the table stood glaring at that pocket of Sir John’s waistcoat which held that dreadful thing; and after some interval, he spoke in broken whisper: