‘Blake,’ said Conseltine, ‘I want to talk to you. Did ye ever think of emigration?’
‘Did I ever think o’ _what_?’ asked Blake, pausing with his tumbler half-way to his lips.
‘I never did,’ returned Blake. ‘Why would I?’
‘Well,’ said his companion, ‘there are many reasons why ye might think of it. Ye’re just spoiling here--wasting yourself. If ye’d go out West, a man of your abilities, with a little capital, would do well. Land and hiring are cheap; it’s a lovely climate, and there are no end of chances of making money. I’ll tell ye what, now. ’Tis a sin and a shame to see a man like you wasting yourself in this cursed country. I’ll make that two hundred five, and pay your passage out, if ye’ll take the next steamer to New York.’
‘By the saints!’ cried Blake, ‘ye’re mighty generous all of a sudden. Ye want to get rid of me? Spake the truth, now, isn’t that it?’
‘Well,’ said Conseltine, with a great appearance of candour, ‘that is it! I’d rather have you out of the country. You’re dangerous here, Blake--dangerous to us and to yourself.’
‘To myself!’ echoed Blake. ‘And how am I dangerous to meself?’
‘Ye’ll be splitting some day on a certain matter that we know of--easy now, we needn’t name names--and if ye did speak, ’twould be worse for you than for us.’
‘Well,’ said Conseltine, ‘you’d very likely get a sum of money down from the other parties; but that once spent--ye’d get no more, and you’d spend the rest of your days in an Irish gaol. Now, so long as you’re faithful to our cause, you know you have a faithful friend in me. I’ll give ye five hundred down to go to America, and another two hundred a year as long as you live. Don’t answer now,’ he continued, as Blake opened his lips to speak. ‘Think it over, and I’m sure ye’ll see things as I see them, and admit that it’s best for you to be out of the way of temptation.’
Blake swallowed another tumbler of punch.
‘’Tis a mighty fine idea,’ he said thoughtfully, with a thickening of the voice which showed that he was fast nearing his normal pitch of intoxication. He rubbed his head dubiously, and, to clear his wits, poured out and drank a half-glass of neat whisky. ‘Leave my ancestral possessions! Desert Blake’s Hall! What are ye grinning at, ye thief of darkness?’ he demanded angrily of Richard, who had glanced round the barren room with a smile of pitying contempt; then he lurched forward in his chair, with bloodshot eyes glaring at Conseltine, who, having thrown away his second glass of whisky, filled a third. ‘Tell me, now,’ he said, ‘is the whisky good out there?’