Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/357

 "Tell her from me, that I have on my watch chain the half of a sovereign that—"

"Yer honor!"

"Go to thunder!"

"But yer honor—"

"I'll 'honor' ye, ye omadhaun! Get the deuce out av here, before I—"

Danny, who had quietly finished his task of packing and had slipped away, leaving O'Rourke in the heat of composition and dead to the world, on returning had merely ventured to stick the tip of his snub nose and the corner of one eye around the edge of the door. From this vantage point he dared persist, emboldened by necessity.

"Yer honor, 'tis—"

"D'ye want me to flay ye alive?"

"The min f'r th' troonks!" shouted Danny defiantly.

"What's that?" O'Rourke paused and put down his pen with a sigh.

"'Tis the stheamer that will be in in half an hour, yer honor—"

"Very well, then. I'm coming," said O'Rourke pacifically.

But it was with regret that he added a hastily scrawled signature to his letter to Chambret, then sealed and addressed it. Calling Danny, he handed him the missive, with strict injunctions to let nothing deter him from posting it without the least delay; and, rising, O'Rourke left the Hôtel d'Angleterre and strolled down to the water-front deliberately, watching the mail-boat steam slowly into the roadstead—the vessel that was to bear him away from Tangiers, away from the East, away from Romance. He found himself almost sorry that he was to know no more this life that he had chosen