"What these men come to you an' I'll come to, an' I don't care to be reminded of it. So let's leave the spot."
"What silly talk, Blott! what silly talk! Here no one comes, and here we are free from prying eyes. Fools think the hut is haunted, and that is why I have chosen it for a hiding-place. There is no spot on earth so safe, Blott."
"There's other places secure enough for me, an' I'd rather stand in the open than hide here and be safe," Blott answered, in anger.
"Will you never stop, Blott, will you never stop? I shall lose my temper, I am afraid, and it is always bad for those about me when I do," Burke answered, his voice, if possible, more subdued than before. "You can't put off the day you will hang by shutting your eyes, and what is there to fear from the graves of dead men or a rotting gibbet? You put me out, Blott."
"I don't care whether I put you out or not. I'm no boy," Blott answered, impatiently.
"Surely not! surely not! But we must have a hiding-place, and what one so safe as this, which every man shuns?"
"I'm not afeerd, but I don't like the company," Blott answered gloomily.
"These men will never betray us. Do they cry out that it was I who fired the shot for which they were hung? Not a bit of it. Give me dead men when there is anything to hide."
"You're the devil's own, Burke."
"Perhaps, Blott, perhaps; but what has the devil done to you or me that we should be afraid of him?"