play to trate me well."

"There is only one thing in the world could induce me to do otherwise."

"An' what's that, sir?"

"Your daring to use a threat to me!" said Linton, sternly. "There never
was the man that tried that game--and there have been some just as
clever fellows as Tom Keane who did try it--who did n't find that they
met their match."

"I only ax what's right and fair," said the other, abashed by the daring
effrontery of Linton's air.

"And you shall have it, and more. You shall either have enough to settle
in America, or, if you prefer it, to live abroad."

"And why not stay at home here?" said Tom, doggedly.

"To blurt out your secret in some drunken moment, and be hanged at
last!" said Linton, with a cutting irony.

"An', maybe, tell how one Misther Linton put the wickedness first in my
head," added Tom, as if finishing the sentence.

Linton bit his lip, and turned angrily away to conceal the mortification
the speech had caused him. "My good friend," said he, in a deliberate
voice, "you think that whenever you upset the boat you will drown _me_;
and I have half a mind to dare you to it, just to show you the shortness
of your calculation. Trust me"--there was a terrible distinctness in his
utterance of these words--"trust me, that in all my dealings with the
world, I have left very little at the discretion of what are called men
of honor. I leave nothing, absolutely nothing, in the power of such as
you."

At last did Linton strike the right chord of the fellow's nature; and in
his subdued and crestfallen countenance might be read the signs of his
prostration.

"Hear me now attentively, Keane, and let my words rest well in your
memory. The trial comes on on the 15th; your evidence will be the most
important of all; but give it with the reluctance of a man who shrinks
from bringing his landlord to the scaffold. You understand me? Let
everything you say show the desire to screen Mr. Cashel. Another point:
affect not to know anything save what you actually saw. You never can
repeat too often the words, 'I did n't see it.' This scrupulous reliance
on eyesight imposes well upon a jury. These are the only cautions I have
to give you. Your own natural intelligence will supply the rest. When
all is finished you will come up to Dublin, and call at a certain
address which will be given you hereafter. And now we part. It is your
own fault if you lose a friend who never deserted the man that stood by
h