rn whelp?
He's making trouble, Top; and he'll make more with every year he
lives. Let him shift for himself, man! I care nothing about him. What
was his father to me? What was his mother? Make him a cook on a
trader. Make him a hand on a Labradorman. Put him before the mast on a
foreign craft. What do I care? Let him go! Give him a hook and line. A
paddle-punt is patrimony enough for the like of him. Will you never
listen to reason? What's the lad to you? Damn him, say I! Let him--"

"For that," my uncle interrupted, in a passion, "I'll hurt ye! Come
soon, come late, I'll hurt ye! Hear me?" he continued, savagely. "I'll
hurt ye for them evil wishes!"

I had expected this outbreak. My uncle would not hear me damned in
this cruel way without protest.

"Top," says the stranger, with a little laugh of scorn, "when _you_
hurt _me_--I'll know that the chieftest knave of the St. John's
water-side has turned fool!"

"When I hurts ye, man," my uncle answered, "I'll hurt ye sore!"

Again the man laughed.

"Ah, man!" my uncle growled, "but ye'll squirm for that when the time
comes!"

"Come, come, Top!" says the stranger, in such a whine of terror, in
such disgusting weakness and sudden withdrawal of high boasting, in
such a failure of courage, that I could hardly credit the thing.
"Come, come, Top!" he whined. "You'll do nothing rash, will you? Not
_rash_, Top--not rash!"

"I'll make ye squirm, sir," says my uncle, "for damnin' Dannie."

"But you'll do nothing rash, man, will you?"

My uncle would not heed him.

"I'm a reasonable man, Top," the stranger protested. "You know I'm not
a hard man."

They moved, now, into the dining-room, whence no word of what they
said came to my ears. I listened, lying wide-eared in the dark, but
heard only a rumble of voices. "And you, too--you hound!" the man had
said; and 'twas spoken in the hate that forebodes murder. My uncle?
what had that childlike, tenderhearted old rascal accomplished against
this man to make the penalty of ungodly wrath a thing meet to the
offence? "And you, too--you hound!" I lay in grave trouble and
bewilderment, fearing that this strange guest might work his hate upon
my uncle, in some explosion of resentment, before my arm could aid
against the deed. There was no sound of laughter from below--no hint
of conviviality in the intercourse. Voices and the clink of bottle and
glass: nothing mellow in the voices, nothing genial in the clink of
glass--nothing