"Faith and I don't," The McMurrough answered, his tone much lowered. "That's true for you!" When it came to a collision of wills the other was his master.
"No," Asgill repeated. "But don't you talk like that again, or harm will come of it. I may be what you say—I may be! But I wouldn't lay a finger on your sister against her will—no, not to be in Paradise!"
"I thought you didn't believe in Paradise," the younger man muttered sulkily, striving to cover the check he had received.
"There's a Paradise I do believe in," Asgill answered. "But never mind that." He sat down again.
Strange to relate, he meant what he said. Many changes corrupt loyalty, and of evil times evil men are the natural fruit. In nearly all respects Asgill was as unscrupulous a man as the time in which he lived and the class from which he sprang could show. Following in the steps of a griping, miserly sire, he had risen to his present station by oppression and chicanery; by crushing the weak and cajoling the strong. And he was prepared to maintain his ground by means as vile and a hand as hard. But he loved; and—strange anomaly, bizarre exception, call it what you will—somewhere in the depths of his earthly nature a spark of good survived, and fired him with so pure an ardour that at the least hint of disrespect to his mistress, at a thought of injury to her, the whole man rose in arms. It was a strange, yet a common inconsistency; an inconstancy to evil odd enough to set The McMurrough marvelling, while common enough to commend itself to a thinking mind.
"Enough of that!" Asgill repeated after a moment's pause. While he did not fear, it did not suit him to break with his companion. "And, indeed, it was not of your sister I was thinking when I said where'd we be if we quarrelled. For it's not I'll be the cuckoo to push you out, McMurrough, lad. But a man there is will play the old grey bird yet, if you let him be. And him with the power and all."
"D'you mean John Sullivan?"
"I mean that same, my jewel."
The young man laughed derisively. He had resumed his seat by the other's side. "Pho!" he said, "you'll be jesting. For the power, it's but a name. If he were to use, were it but the thin end of it, it would run into his hand! The boys would rise upon him, and Flavvy'd be the worst of them. It's in the deep bog he'd be, before he knew where he was, and never'd he come out, Luke Asgill! Sure, I'm not afraid of him!"
"You've need to be!" Asgill said soberly.