'He's dead, Sir—yes,' said his saturnine visitor, with the same faint smile and cynical quietude.
'Speak out, Sirrah; whom do you come from?'
'The late Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Dunoran.' He spoke, as I have said, a little thickly, like a man who had drunk his modicum of liquor.
'You've been drinking, and you dare to mix my—my father's name with your drunken dreams and babble—you wretched sot!'
A cloud passed over the moon just then, and Irons darkened, as if about to vanish, like an offended apparition. But it was only for a minute, and he emerged in the returning light, and spoke—
'A naggin of whiskey, at the Salmon House, to raise my heart before I came here. I'm not drunk—that's sure.' He answered, quite unmoved, like one speaking to himself.
'And—why—what can you mean by speaking of him?' repeated Mervyn, unaccountably agitated.
'I speak for him, Sir, by your leave. Suppose he greets you with a message—and you don't care to hear it?'
'You're mad,' said Mervyn, with an icy stare, to whom the whole colloquy began to shape itself into a dream.
'Belike you're mad, Sir,' answered Irons, in a grim, ugly tone, but with face unmoved. ''Twas not a light matter brought me here—a message—there—well!—your right honourable father, that lies in lead and oak, without a name on his coffin-lid, would have you to know that what he said was—as it should be—and I can prove it—'