Asgill stared. "Do you mean——"
"I mean what I say," the Colonel answered. "This is not his house, as you well know."
"But——"
"It is mine, and I do not propose to entertain you, Mr. Asgill," Colonel John continued. "Is that sufficiently plain?"
The glove was down. The two men looked at one another, while the knot of beggars, gathered round the gate and just out of earshot, watched them—in the dark as to all else, but aware with Irish shrewdness that they were at grips. Asgill was not only taken by surprise, but he lay under the disadvantage of ignorance. He did not know precisely how things stood, much less could he explain this sudden attack. Yet if the tall, lean man, serious and growing grey, represented one form of strength, the shorter, stouter man, with the mobile face and the quick brain, stood for another. Offhand he could think of no weak spot on his side; and if he must fight, he would fight.
He forced a laugh. And, truly to think of this man, who had not seen Morristown for a score of years, using the experience of a fortnight to give him notice to quit, was laughable. The laugh he had forced became real.
"More plain than hospitable, Colonel," he said. "Perhaps, after all, it will be best so, and we shall understand one another."
"I am thinking so," Colonel Sullivan answered. It was plain that he did not mean to be drawn from the position he had taken up.
"Only I think that you have overlooked this," Asgill continued smoothly. "It is one thing to own a house and another to kick the logs on the hearth; one thing to have the deeds and another—in the west—to pass the punch-bowl! More, by token, 'tis a hospitable country this, Colonel, none more so; and if there is one thing would annoy The McMurrough and the young lady, his sister, more than another, it would be to turn a guest from the door—that is thought to be theirs!"
"You mean that you will not take my bidding?" the Colonel said.