This secret made the people of Kilcash conscious of being hypocrites, and accounted for the forced smile with which they greeted visitors in summer, and the night of leaden gloom which descended on them when the visitors departed for the year. The inhabitants of Kilcash never smiled in winter. To laugh in winter would have sounded like a pæan over their miserable, misguided visitors. It would have indicated a heartless and brutal nature.
O'Brien and O'Hanlon alighted at the "Strand Hotel," and ordered dinner and beds. During dinner, O'Hanlon made two ineffectual attempts to extract O'Brien's idea from him, but the latter would not speak. He smiled, and repeated his former word "Wait." O'Brien in his turn tried to induce O'Hanlon to talk, but the latter answered in the briefest and most apathetic way. The dinner was finished in absolute silence.
"You won't mind my going out for an hour or so?"
"Going out!" cried O'Hanlon, rousing up. "Where on earth are you going at such an hour, in such a place? Not to that accursed Black Rock?"
"No, no," said O'Brien. "Only I'm quite sure you would never dream of entering such a place, I would ask you to come with me."
"Oh, you're too respectable for it, I assure you."
"Done! I'm going to the 'Blue Anchor' to drink a pint of beer and smoke a pipe of tobacco. Hand over the money."
"The 'Blue Anchor'--the Blue 'Anchor!' Are _you_ out of your mind too, or are you joking? Oh, I know! You want to get rid of me for an hour, but don't like to say so."
"I have a bet of a sovereign on it, and I'll take the money now, if you like. Will that convince you?"
"No; I'll pay when you come back and tell me you have been there. But if you really are going to that low beershop, tell me what you are going there for."
O'Hanlon screwed up his eyes and regarded O'Brien closely.
He knew O'Brien much too well to think he meant to be offensive, or even smart at the expense of an old friend without good reason. He suspected O'Brien was waiving a direct answer, which might cause pain to his hearer.
"It's something you suspect, and don't like to tell me. You're not going over to the dispensary to ask Dr. Flynn to drop in presently, as though by accident, and find me here, and make an informal examination?"