Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/101

Rh "I 've got a cigar," Feeny said, feeling in the breast of his overcoat.

The watchman sniffed. "What good 's a saygar? Gi' me a pinch av yer chewin'. I 'll smoke that."

Feeny passed him the package of fine-cut, and he filled a pipe-bowl that was burned as thin and jagged as the half of a scorched eggshell. He blinked his pathetic old hound's eyes at the flame of the match. When the tobacco had begun to fume and bubble rankly, he settled down with his elbows on his knees, and said: "Listen, now. I 've come to the pint. Listen!"

"When I got foot on the pavemints again, what d' yeh think I larned?—that Sleeman had me job in the Coort House—Butch Sleeman!—an' him givin' me the laugh! 'Faith,' I says, 'I 'll fix you, me brave boy,' an' I wint to Tweed. An' he toorned me down! Toorned me down!… 'Yeh wint galivantin' off to the war,' he says, 'an' left yer frien's to fight out their own troubles here,' he says, 'an' now yeh can make good,' he says. 'Go an' make good,' he says.

"I looked at him, an', 'I 'm a married man,' I says—'an' tried fer to say it meek, fer Molly's sake, the way av married men—'I 'm a married man,' I says, 'an' the wife 's in trouble, an' there 's the doctor to pay, an' the likes av that,' I says.

"He waved me off like a street beggar. 'That 's none av my doin',' says he. An' with that, 'twas as if some one had pulled a trigger in me head, an' I boorst out with a curse av Tweed, like yersilf here—jus' like!