“Why so?” queried Craig, and unconsciously the scowl was repeated.  “You seemed glad enough to come.”

“I was—­then,” shortly.

“And why not now?  Talk up, if you’ve any grievance.  Don’t sit there like a chimpanzee, hugging it.”

“You know why well enough,” ignored the other.  He passed a knotty hand through his shock of red whiskers absently.  “I’ve expected the devil or worse here every night these last weeks.”

Craig tried to laugh; but the effort resulted in failure.

“God,” he satirised, “who’d ever imagined you were the superstitious sort!  Weren’t you ever in a place where anyone died before?”

“I never was where a woman and her child were murdered,” deliberately.

Quick as thought Craig’s red face whitened.

“Damn you, O’Reilly,” he challenged, “you’re free with your tongue.”  He checked himself.  “I don’t wish to quarrel with you to-night, though,” he conciliated.

“Nor I with you,” returned the other impassively.  “I was merely telling you the truth.  Besides, it’s none of my affair; and even if it were, I’m thinking you’ll pay for it dear enough before you’re through.”

Craig straightened in his seat; but not as before in attitude supercilious.

“What the deuce do you mean, O’Reilly?  You keep suggesting things, but that is all.  Talk plain if you know anything.”

“I don’t know anything,” impassively; “unless it is that I wouldn’t be in your shoes if I got a dollar for every cent you’ve made out of this cursed business.”

Bit by bit Craig’s face whitened.  If anything the air of conciliation augmented.

“You think circumstances weren’t to blame?” he queried.  “That, in other words, I’ve brought things about as they are deliberately?”

“I don’t think anything.  I know what you’ve done—­and what you’ve got to answer for.”

Instinctively, almost with a shudder, Craig glanced about him.

The shade of the single window was up, and of a sudden he arose unsteadily and drew it over the blackness outside with a jerk.

“You’re beastly hard on me,” he commented, “but let that pass.  It’s probably the last time we’ll ever see each other, and we may as well part friends.”  He was back in his place again with the flask before him, and with a propitiatory motion he extended the liquor toward the other man.  “Come, let’s forget it,” he insinuated.  “Have a drink with me.”

“Not a drop.”

“Not if I requested it?”

“Not if you got down on your knees and begged.”

“All right.”  The hand was withdrawn with a nervous little laugh.  “I’ll have to spoil it all myself, then.”

The Irishman watched in silence while the other gulped down swallow after swallow.  The hand of the drinker trembled uncontrollably, and a tiny red stream trickled down the unshaven chin to the starched linen beneath.