“Open your door, you hypocritical old sinner, and I will speak to you. Open your door instantly.”
“Wait, then; I will open it; to be sure—I will open it; because I know whoever you are that if there was not something extraordinary in it, it isn't at this hour you'd be coming to me.”
“Open the door I say, and then I shall speak to you.”
The window, which the old herbalist had opened, and, in the hurry of the moment, left unshut, remained unshut, and Barney, after Woodward had entered, stood close to it in order to hear the conversation which might pass between them.
“Now,” said Woodward, after he had entered the hut, “I want a dose from you. One of my dogs, I fear, is seized with incipient symptoms of hydrophobia, and I wish to dose him to death.”
“And what hour is this to come for such a purpose?” asked Sol Donnel. “It isn't at midnight that a man comes to me to ask for a dose of poison for a dog.”
“You are very right in that,” replied Woodward; “but the truth is, that I had an assignation with a girl in the town, and I thought that I might as well call upon you now as at any other time.”
The eye of the old sinner glistened, for he knew perfectly well that the malady of the dog was a fable.
“Well,” said he, “I can give you the dose, but what's to be the recompense?”
“What do you ask?” replied the other. “I will dose nothing under five pounds.”