d me sympathetic.
But just now I am going to throw you out."

"You may if you can," retorted Farrell, eyeing my advance warily.
"I've spoilt this marrying, I guess: and that's the first long chalk
crossed off a long tally."

I was about to grip with him when Jimmy called sharply that there
were to be no blows--Foe wanted to speak.

Foe had recovered under the brandy and lay over on his side, facing
us, panting a little from the dose--of which Jimmy had been liberal.

"Have it out, Roddy," he gasped, "here and now. I'm strong enough to
get it over, and--and he can't tell you any worse than you both know,
of my free telling--and I don't want to trouble either of you again.
Let him have it out," implored Foe, between his sharp intakes of
breath.

"I am glad you excepted _me_," burst out Farrell. "You'll trouble
_me_ again fast enough: or, rather, I'll trouble _you_--to the end of
your dirty life. Are you shamming sick, there, you Foe?"

"You know that he is not," said Jimmy, holding back my arm.
"Tell your story, and clear."

"My story?" echoed Farrell in a bewildered way. "What's my story
more than what you know, it seems? What's my story more than that,
after sharing hell for days in an open boat, and solitude on that
awful island, this man left me--choosing when I was sick and sorry:
left me to hell and solitude together--left me to it, cold-blooded,
when I was too weak to crawl--left me, in his cursed grudge, when he
could have saved two as easy as one? Has he told you that,
gentlemen?"

"He told me quite faithfully," said I. "We--Mr. Collingwood and I--
both know it."

"Ay," Farrell retorted, "but neither you nor your Mr. Collingwood,
when you say that, understands a bit what it means . . ." He broke
off, searching for some words to convey the remembered agony to our
brains that had no capacity (he felt) even to imagine it.

"No," came a dull voice from the couch--startling us, dull though it
was. "Only you and I, Farrell, understand what it means. Tell them
just the facts, as I told the facts, and no more. Tell them, and me,
how you escaped."

"By the same ship as you did, if you wish to know--the _I'll Away_
schooner, Captain Jefferson Hales. And I'll tell you something even
more surprising.--Your ill-luck started the very hour you left me and
Rover to die like two dogs together. When you stepped aboard the
_I'll Away_, you stepped aboard as a lost missionary. You had your
own bad reaso