faith, had the best of the bout, too!" Asgill continued coolly,
and with his eyes fixed on the other's features, as if his one aim was
to see if he had hit the mark. "So much the best that I'll be chancing
a guess he's upstairs at this moment, and wounded! Leastwise, I hear
you and the young lady brought him to the house between you, and him
scarcely able to use his ten toes."

Payton, with his mouth open, glared at the speaker in a manner that at
another time must have provoked him to laughter.

"Isn't that the fact?" Asgill asked coldly.

"The fact!" the other burst forth. "No, I'm cursed if it is! And you
know it is not! You know as well as I do----" And with that he poured
forth a version of the events of the afternoon, and of those leading up
to them, which included not only the Colonel's release, but the
treatment to which he had been subjected and the motive for it.

When he had done, "That's a strange story," Asgill said quietly, "if
it's true."

"True?" Payton rejoined, laying his hand on a glass and speaking in a
towering rage. "Damn you, you know it's true!"

"I know nothing about it," Asgill replied, with the utmost coolness.

"Nothing?"

"And for a good reason. Sure, and I'm the last person they would be
likely to tell it to!"

"And you were not a party to it?" Payton cried.

"Why should I be?" Asgill rejoined, calmly cutting a slice of bread.
"What have I to gain by robbing the young lady of her inheritance? I'd
be more likely to lose by it than gain."

"Lose by it? Why?"

"That is my affair," Asgill answered. And he hummed:

They tried put the comether on Judy McBain:
One, two, three, one, two, three!
Cotter and crowder and Paddy O'Hea;
For who but she's owner of Ballymacshane?

He made his meaning so clear, and pointed it so audaciously before them
all, that Payton, after scowling at him for some seconds with his hand
on a glass as if he meant to throw it, dropped his eyes and his hand
and fell into a gloomy study. He could not but own the weight of the
other's argument. If Asgill was a pretender to the heiress's hand--and
Payton did not doubt this--the last thought in his mind would be to
divest her of her property.

Asgill read his thoughts, and presently, "I hope the wound is not
serious?" he said.

"He is not wounded," the Major answered curtly. A few minutes before he
would have flown out at the other; now he took the thrust quietly. He
was thinking. Meanwhi