Page:Marriott Watson--Galloping Dick.djvu/22

 face. “You have been very tedious, my friend,” says he. “Indeed, I was in some hopes that my rascals would have returned ere you had found your spirit for the job.”

I could not but admire him even through my irritation, but I kept the muzzle at his head, and cried out impatiently: “Ha’ done, my lord, ha’ done! ’Tis ill jesting with Dick Ryder on his rounds. Out, out with your long, fat purse.”

For the first time in our intercourse a slight smile gleamed in the Bishop’s eyes, and his white face fell into deeper corrugations. Withdrawing the rings from his fingers, he placed them with his purse in my hand without a word, and looked at me inquiringly. I clapped the booty in my pockets with a nod of satisfaction, while dropping back into his seat he slowly re-crossed his legs.

“And now,” quoth he, “you will, I trust, allow me to repose in quiet. I have had a long day’s journey, and my travels are not yet at their term. Perhaps you will permit me to say that your conversation, which I doubt not