Cool, ironical eyes looked into mine.
"You're very free with your little gun, my lad. Let me give you a word
in season. Never hold a pistol to a man unless you mean to shoot. If
your eyes waver you had better had a porridge stick."
He pressed my wrist back till my fingers relaxed, and he caught my
pistol in his teeth. With a quick movement of the head he dropped it
inside his shirt.
"There's some would have killed you for that trick, young sir," he
said. "It's trying to the temper to have gunpowder so near a man's
brain. But you're young, and, by your speech, a new-comer. So instead
I'll offer you a drink."
He dropped my wrists, and motioned me to follow him. Very crestfallen
and ashamed, I walked in his wake to a little shanty almost on the
wateredge. The place was some kind of inn, for a negro brought us two
tankards of apple-jack, and tobacco pipes, and lit a foul-smelling
lantern, which he set between us.
"First," says the man, "let me tell you that I never before clapped
eyes on the long piece of rascality you were seeking. He looked like
one that had cheated the gallows."
"He was a man I knew in Scotland," I said grumpily.
"Likely enough. There's a heap of Scots redemptioners hereaways. I'm
out of Scotland myself, or my forbears were, but my father was settled
in the Antrim Glens.
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