body crushingly against him, brushing her cheek and neck with his stiff— bristled mustache, breathing upon her the foul rank odor of rye whisky.
“Oh, he’s cut himself!” The little girl thought she was going to cry.
“Look what they did to me, baby,” he pointed to his wound and whimpered.
Will Pentland, true son of that clan who forgot one another never, and who saw one another only in times of death, pestilence, and terror, came in.
“Good evening, Mr. Pentland,” said Duncan.
“Jus’tolable,” he said, with his bird-like nod and wink, taking in both men good-naturedly. He stood in front of the fire, paring meditatively at his blunt nails with a dull knife. It was his familiar gesture when in company: no one, he felt, could see what you thought about anything, if you pared your nails.
The sight of him drew Gant instantly from his lethargy: he remembered the dissolved partnership; the familiar attitude of Will Pentland, as he stood before the fire, evoked all the markings he so heartily loathed in the clan—its pert complacency, its incessant punning, its success.
“Mountain Grills!” he roared. “Mountain Grills! The lowest of the low! The vilest of the vile!”
“Mr. Gant! Mr. Gant!” pleaded Jannadeau.
“What’s the matter with you, W. O.?” asked Will Pentland, looking up innocently from his fingers. “Had something to eat that didn’t agree with you?”—he winked pertly at Duncan, and went back to his fingers.
“Your miserable old father,” howled Gant, “was horsewhipped on the public square for not paying his debts.” This was a purely imaginative insult, which had secured itself as truth, however, in Gant’s mind, as had so many other stock epithets, because it gave him heart-cockle satisfaction.
“Horsewhipped upon his public square, was he?” Will winked again, unable to resist the opening. “They kept it mighty quiet, didn’t they?” But behind the intense good-humored posture of his face, his eyes were hard. He pursed his lips meditatively as he worked upon his fingers.
