Sir! Replied he, again staring with reviving alarm and suspicion—
I continued.—To tell you the truth, Mr. Mac Fane, that is the very subject which brought you and I into company this evening. I suspected your hate of Henley, and to be sincere I hate him too.
Had you seen the fellow's face brighten, Fairfax, and after brightening begin to flame, you would not have readily forgotten the picture.
But I am rather surprised to meet you in public, sir, added I.
What do you mane by that, sir?
I thought you deemed it prudent to keep out of the way, on account of that affair?
I felt some gratification in playing thus upon his fears—He now once more put his hand into his side-pocket, and pulling out his pistols laid them before him. By Jasus, sir, I don't very well know what you would be at! But when I understand the full tote of your questions, I shall know how to give an answer.
I could not very well digest this oblique menace; but to have quarrelled with such a rascal would in every sense have been madness. You have a well-mounted pair of pistols there, said I, Mr. Mac Fane. I'll bet you the fifty guineas, double or quit, I break this china plate at the first shot, ten paces distant.
By the great grumbler, answered he, but I'll bet you don't! immediately delivering me one pistol, and taking up and unlocking the other himself. Accordingly I placed the plate against the wall, fired, and was not far from the centre. Upon my honour and soul, sir, said Mac Fane, but I find you are a good shot, and I shall be glad to be better acquainted with you.
Having convinced him that I could hit a mark as well as himself, I returned to the subject of Henley; and though I could not bring him to be explicit, I learned from him that he was acquainted with Henley's aversion to prosecute, but does not know on what that aversion is founded. Beside which he confides in a want of witnesses, as I could perceive: except that he has some fear of his accomplice, Webb; a man in whose company this very Mac Fane once attempted to rob Sir Arthur, and whom I suspect he would impeach, but that it would ruin all his gambling views. For he has found means of associating with that whole class of young fools of fortune, whose perverted education leads them to take pleasure in the impudence and humour of such a fellow, as well as in seeing each other stripped and ruined by turns; but who would never admit him as a companion, did they know he had been guilty of an act so desperate as that of going on the highway. Scarcely any thing short of this can expel such a fellow from such society.