“Are ye opposed, sur, to ould Atkins sendin’ off the durty negur? That’s what I mane,” said Driscoll.
“I am!” cried Harrington, with a lightning look at Bagasse, and a wish that he was out of the room.
Driscoll looked at the table, and looking at it, slowly swung up his clenched left fist like one pelting a pool, and hurled a twenty dollar gold piece ringing on the cloth.
“Then I’m dommed if I’ll do it,” he exultingly howled, with a thump of his fist on the money. “Hurroo for the bridge that carries us over, and it’s you that wor the bridge of goold to me and the ould woman and the childher in the black hour, Mr. Harrington. Ould Atkins and his money to the divil, and bad scran to him and his for an ould robber, for I’m dommed if I’ll do wan thing that ye are opposed to, sur. Arrah, bad look to him, and may he niver know glory, for the black thafe o’ the world that he is; but it’s yerself that dhressed him down thremindous this blissed day, Mr. Harrington. Troth, but it’s the good blood that’s in the Harringtons, and kings and imperors they wor in the ould country wanst, and sorra the word o’ lie in it!”
With which highly apocryphal assertion, Driscoll’s excited outburst ceased, and he fell to wiping his heated face, first with one coat-sleeve and then with the other.
Harrington rose from his seat, white as death, his nostrils heaving and his eyes aflame.
“Bagasse,” he said, “will you be kind enough to leave me”— He stopped, touched by the look of tender sympathy on the grotesque face of the fencing-master. “No,” he cried, “don’t go. Stay with me. You shall know it—you shall know what it is that is killing me. But tell me,” he pursued, speaking in French, “tell me, on the honor of a soldier, that you will never breathe one word of this to any living being, for it is a secret which must be kept close as the grave.”
Bagasse struck hands with him with passionate and martial energy.
“I swear it,” he hoarsely cried in French. “Let me know it, for I cannot bear to see you suffer, and if I can help you, I will!”
“Good!” exclaimed Harrington. “Driscoll, attend to me. Where is that negro?”