The doctor had risen to his feet, was clearing his throat preparatory to an important speech, when the saloon door was pushed open, and Mac looked in—not the careless, swaggering Mac of past days, but Mac haggard, weird, scarcely human, with unkempt locks and bloodshot eyes. Goodhew was seated next to the pretty Londoner. ‘Hillo, Mac, old fellow; come in, come in; you’re just in time,’ he said.
‘By the powers!’ exclaimed Mac, ‘ye’re not dead, Mister Goodhew!’
‘No, old fellow,’ replied Goodhew, with a laugh. ‘But if your pistol had carried a bullet, I should have been.’
‘But the blood on your forehead—I saw it!’ cried Mac.—‘And Mrs Fuller—she’s wid ye, I see!’
‘No, no, Mac; wrong this time,’ returned Goodhew, smiling. ‘There was no blood on my forehead; and it isn’t Mrs Fuller that’s beside me.’
‘Whisht, man! I’m not draming now; I know what I’m talking about,’ exclaimed Mac. ‘D’ye mane that there was no blood on your forehead after I’d hit ye, and d’ye mane that it isn’t Mrs Fuller alongside of ye at all?’
‘Yes, old fellow,’ said Goodhew, rising, and stretching out his hand to the bewildered Irishman. ‘The mark on my forehead was only a little red paint carried in the palm of my hand, and ready to be slapped on the moment you discharged your deadly weapon; and the lady’——
‘Yes, yes, the lady?’ interposed Mac with eagerness.
‘The lady was made Mrs Goodhew about a couple of hours back,’ calmly replied the Englishman. ‘Give us your hand, and drink our healths.’
Mac did both, and ever after remained a firm friend of Goodhew’s, although always a little touchy on the subject of ghosts.