“I'm greatly obleeged,” said he, “but man's forgiveness doesna coont sae muckle as a preen, and I would ask ye to see hoo it stands wi' yersel', Daniel Risk has made his peace wi' his Maker, but what way is it wi' the nephew o' Andrew Greig?”
“It ill becomes a man in a condemned cell to be preacher to those outside of it,” I told him in some exasperation at his presumption.
He threw up his hands and glowered at me with his gleed eye looking seven ways for sixpence as the saying goes.
“Dinna craw ower crouse, young man,” he said. “Whit brings ye here I canna guess, but I ken that you that's there should be in here where I am, for there's blood on your hands.”
He had me there! Oh, yes, he had me there! Every vein in my body told me so. But I was not in the humour to make an admission of that kind to this creature.
“I have no conceit of myself in any respect whatever, Daniel Risk,” I said slowly. “I came here from France but yesterday after experiences there that paid pretty well for my boy's crime, for I have heard from neither kith nor kin since you cozened me on the boards of the Seven Sisters.”
He put his hands upon the bars and looked at me. He wore a prison garb of the most horrible colour, and there were round him the foul stenches of the cell.
“Ay!” said he. “New back! And they havena nabbed ye yet! Weel, they'll no' be lang, maybe, o' doin' that, for I'll warrant ye've been advertised plenty aboot the country; ony man that has read a gazette or clattered in a public-hoose kens your description and the blackness o' the deed you're chairged wi'. All I did was to sink a bit ship that was rotten onyway, mak' free trade wi' a few ankers o' brandy that wad hae been drunk by the best i' the land includin' the very lords that tried me, and accidentally kill a lad that sair needed a beltin' to gar him dae his honest wark. But you shot a man deliberate and his blood is crying frae the grund. If ye hurry ye'll maybe dance on naethin' sooner nor mysel'.”
There was so much impotent venom in what he said that I lost my anger with the wretch drawing near his end, and looked on him with pity. It seemed to annoy him more than if I had reviled him.
“I'm a white soul.” says he, clasping his hands—the most arrant blasphemy of a gesture from one whose deeds were desperately wicked! “I'm a white soul, praise God! and value not your opinions a docken leaf. Ye micht hae come here to this melancholy place to slip a bit guinea into my hand for some few extra comforts, instead o' which it's jist to anger me.”