Remembering Dan's share in the catastrophe, Stowell was feeling the vertigo of a temptation to take the gross creature by the neck and fling him through the window.
"Why do you come to me?" he asked.
"To ask you to tell your friend that he's got to make an honest woman of the girl."
"Is that all you are thinking about?"
Dan drew a quick breath, then dug both hands into the upright pockets of his trousers, thrust forward his thick neck, with a gesture peculiar to the bull, and answered:
"No, I'm thinking of myself as well, and what for shouldn't I? I'm going to stand up for my own rights, too. The man that treats my girl like that has got to marry her, and I'm not going to be satisfied with nothing less."
Then picking up his billycock hat and making for the door he said:
"I lave it with you, Mr. Stowell, Sir. If the Dempster was the grand gentleman people are saying, his son will be seeing justice done to me and mine. If not, the island will be too hot for the guilty man, I'm thinking."
When Dan had gone Stowell felt sick and dizzy, and as if he were drawing back from the edge of a precipice. His heroic act of self-sacrifice had dwindled to a ridiculous weakness.
This man, with his blatant vulgarity of mind and soul, at Ballamoar! His father-in-law! A member of his family! Riding over him with a degrading tyranny! In the dining-room, with his broad buttocks to the fire—never, never, never!