‘It is not your fault, Slavin,’ he said in slow, cool voice, ‘that you and your precious crew didn’t sent me to my death, too. You’ve won your bet, but I want to say, that next time, though you are seven to one, or ten times that, when any of you boys offer me a drink I’ll take you to mean fight, and I’ll not disappoint you, and some one will be killed,’ and so saying he strode out again, leaving a mean-looking crowd of men behind him. All who had not been concerned in the business at Nixon’s shack expressed approval of his position, and hoped he would ‘see it through.’
But the impression of Nixon’s words upon Slavin was as nothing compared with that made by Geordie Crawford. It was not what he said so much as the manner of awful solemnity he carried. Geordie was struggling conscientiously to keep his promise to ‘not be ‘ard on the boys,’ and found considerable relief in remembering that he had agreed ‘to leave them tae the Almichty.’ But the manner of leaving them was so solemnly awful, that I could not wonder that Slavin’s superstitious Irish nature supplied him with supernatural terrors. It was the second day after the funeral that Geordie and I were walking towards Slavin’s. There was a great shout of laughter as we drew near.
Geordie stopped short, and saying, ‘We’ll juist gang in a meenute,’ passed through the crowd and up to the bar.
‘Michael Slavin,’ began Geordie, and the men stared in dead, silence, with their glasses in their hands. ‘Michael Slavin, a’ promised the lad a’d bear ye nae ill wull, but juist leave ye tae the Almichty; an’ I want tae tell ye that a’m keepin’ ma wur-r-d. But’—and here he raised his hand, and his voice became preternaturally solemn—‘his bluid is upon yer han’s. Do ye no’ see it?’
His voice rose sharply, and as he pointed, Slavin instinctively glanced at his hands, and Geordie added—
‘Ay, and the Lord will require it o’ you and yer hoose.’
They told me that Slavin shivered as if taken with ague after Geordie went out, and though he laughed and swore, he did not stop drinking till he sank into a drunken stupor and had to be carried to bed. His little French-Canadian wife could not understand the change that had come over her husband.
‘He’s like one bear,’ she confided to Mrs. Mavor, to whom she was showing her baby of a year old. ‘He’s not kees me one tam dis day. He’s mos hawful bad, he’s not even look at de baby.’ And this seemed sufficient proof that something was seriously wrong; for she went on to say—
‘He’s tink more for dat leel baby dan for de whole worl’; he’s tink more for dat baby dan for me,’ but she shrugged her pretty little shoulders in deprecation of her speech.
‘You must pray for him,’ said Mrs. Mavor, ‘and all will come right.’