Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/261

Rh “A sov’rin!” repeated Peggy, with enthusiasm. “Stick it in your pockut, an’ be grateful iver afther to Peggy’s bare fut!”

He shook his head.

“You won’t?”

Another shake.

“’Tis sinful pride I call it,” remonstrated the girl. “The kind man meant well—”

“The kind man!”

“An’ isn’t he?”

“I owe him a bit already,” replied Tom. “Let me settle that first.”

“But this he meant well, man; this is no farth’n’—”

“So much the worse. He thought to heal the wounds I owe him with a sovereign, did he? His conscience and my wounds! May they lie open, and sting and throb and tickle all at once, as they’re doing now, till I have my fingers at his throat!” The girl looked so frightened that he gulped at his passion, and said, “You keep it yourself, Peggy, like a good girl; you deserve a purse of them for all you’ve done for me this night. Why, what now?”

He sat alone in the lock-up; the girl had stolen swiftly out. In the unconscious egotism of his grief and shame, this simply puzzled him. So he sat in the moonbeams, blinking at the moon, until she returned and once more closed the door.

“All’s safe,” she told him cheerfully. “I heard the thraps snorin’ in their slape.”

“Had you heard something else?”

“I had not.”

“Then what was wrong?”

“Is it why I went out?” said Peggy, fixing him with