“’Twould never come t’ pass, sir.”
My uncle sipped his rum in a muse.
“Uncle Nick,” I complained, “leave un be.”
“’Tis a hard world, Dannie,” he replied.
“Do you leave un be!” I expostulated.
My uncle ignored me. “He’ve a eye, Dannie,” says he, immersed in villanous calculation; “he’ve a dark eye. I ’low it might be managed.”
’Twas an uncomfortable suspicion thus implanted; and ’twas an unhappy outlook disclosed––were my uncle to work his will upon the helpless fellow.
“Uncle Nick, you’ll not mislead un?”
“Bein’ under oath,” my uncle answered, with the accent and glance of tenderest affection, “I’ll keep on, Dannie, t’ the end.”
I poured the second dram of rum and pushed it towards him. ’Twas all hopeless to protest or seek an understanding. I loved the old man, and forgave the paradox of his rascality and loyal affection. The 122 young man from London must take his chance, as must we all, in the fashioning hands of circumstance. ’Twas not to be conceived that his ruin was here to be wrought. My uncle’s face had lost all appearance of repulsion: scar and color and swollen vein––the last mark of sin and the sea––had seemed to vanish from it; ’twas as though the finger of God had in passing touched it into such beauty as the love of children may create of the meanest features of our kind. His glass was in his marred, toil-distorted hand; but his eyes, grown clear and sparkling and crystal-pure––as high of purpose as the eyes of such as delight in sacrifice––were bent upon the lad he had fostered to my age. I dared not––not the lad that was I––I dared not accuse him! Let the young man from London, come for the wage he got, resist, if need were to resist. I could not credit his danger––not on that night. But I see better now than then I saw.