'A naggin of whiskey, at the Salmon House, to raise my heart before I came here. I'm not drunk--that's sure.' He answered, quite unmoved, like one speaking to himself.
'And--why--what can you mean by speaking of him?' repeated Mervyn, unaccountably agitated.
'I speak _for_ him, Sir, by your leave. Suppose he greets you with a message--and you don't care to hear it?'
'You're mad,' said Mervyn, with an icy stare, to whom the whole colloquy began to shape itself into a dream.
'Belike _you're_ mad, Sir,' answered Irons, in a grim, ugly tone, but with face unmoved. ''Twas not a light matter brought me here--a message--there--well!--your right honourable father, that lies in lead and oak, without a name on his coffin-lid, would have you to know that what he said was--as it should be--and I can prove it--'
'What?--he said _what?_--what is it?--what can you prove? Speak out, Sirrah!' and his eyes shone white in the moonlight, and his hand was advanced towards Irons's throat, and he looked half beside himself, and trembling all over.
'Put down your hand or you hear no more from me,' said Irons, also a little transformed.
Mervyn silently lowered his hand clenched by his side, and, with compressed lips, nodded an impatient sign to him.
'Yes, Sir, he'd have you to understand he never did it, and I can prove it--_but I won't!_'
That moment, something glittered in Mervyn's hand, and he strode towards Irons, overturning a chair with a crash.
'I have you--come on and you're a dead man,' said the clerk, in a hoarse voice, drawing into the deep darkness toward the door, with the dull gleam of a pistol-barrel just discernible in his extended hand.
'Stay--don't go,' cried Mervyn, in a piercing voice; 'I conjure--I implore--whatever you are, come back--see, I'm unarmed,' (and he flung his sword back toward the window).
'You young gentlemen are always for drawing upon poor bodies--how would it have gone if I had not looked to myself, Sir, and come furnished?' said Irons, in his own level tone.
'I don't know--I don't _care_--I don't care if I were dead. Yes, yes, 'tis true, I almost wish he had shot me.'
'Mind, Sir, you're on honour,' said the clerk, in his old tone, as he glided slowly back, his right hand in his coat pocket, and his eye with a quiet suspicion fixed upon Mervyn, and watching his movements.