“I am a widdy, Owen.”
The cobbler made a feint to rise, but sank back, repeating, at the top of his breath, “Ye're the loire!”
“What do ye mane?” sternly demanded John. “Ye know I've had me throuble. Ye know I've lost me wife in the old counthry. It's a year gone. Was the praste that wrote the letther a loire?”
“I have a towken that ye're not the widdy ye think ye are.”
John came to Owen and stooped over him, grasping him by the collar. Candle-light across the street and stars in a steel-blue sky did not reveal faces distinctly, but his shaking of the cobbler was an outcome of his own inward convulsion. He belonged to a class in whom memory and imagination were not strong, being continually taxed by a present of large action crowded with changing images. But when his past rose up it took entire possession of him.
“Why didn't ye tell me this before?”
“I've not knowed it the long time meself.”
“What towken have ye got?”
“Towken enough for you and me.”
“Show it to me.”