“Damn the lad!” was the prompt response. “I wish he were dead.”
My uncle laughed.
“Dead!” the stranger repeated. “Dead, Top! And you, too––you hound!”
’Twas an anathema spoken in wrath and hatred.
“I’m thinkin’,” says my uncle, “that ye’re an unkind man.”
The stranger growled.
“Save your temper, man,” my uncle admonished. “Ye’ll need the last rag of it afore the night’s by.”
The man cried out against the threat.
“I’m tellin’ ye,” says my uncle––and I heard his broad hand come with a meaning clap on the stranger’s shoulder––“that ye’ll be wakin’ the lad.”
“The lad! the lad!” the stranger whined. “Is there 126 nothing in the world for you, Top, but that club-footed young whelp?”