face it out now an' stay here, but his wife and me don't see it noways!
So we are taking advantage o' the lull agin him to get him off down the
coast this very night. That's why he's been off his head drinkin'. Ye
see, when a man has been for weeks hidin'--part o' the time in that
room and part o' the time on the wharf, where them Vigilants has been
watchin' every ship that left in order to ketch him, he's inclined to
celebrate his chance o' getting away"--
"Part of the time in that room?" interrupted Breeze quickly.
"Sartin! Don't ye see? He allus kem in as you went out--sabe!--and got
away before you kem back, his wife all the time just a-hoverin' between
the two places, and keeping watch for him. It was killin' to her, you
see, for she wasn't brought up to it, whiles Jim didn't keer--had two
revolvers and kalkilated to kill a dozen Vigilants afore he dropped. But
that's over now, and when I've got him safe on that 'plunger' down at
the wharf to-night, and put him aboard the schooner that's lying off the
Heads, he's all right agin."
"And Roberts knew all this and was one of his friends?" asked Breeze.
"Roberts knew it, and Roberts's wife used to be a kind of servant
to Jim's wife in the South, when she was a girl, but I don't know ez
Roberts is his FRIEND!"
"He certainly has shown himself one," said Breeze.
"Ye-e-s," said the stranger meditatively, "ye-e-s." He stopped, opened
the door softly, and peeped out, and then closed it again softly. "It's
sing'lar, Mr. Breeze," he went on in a sudden yet embarrassed burst
of confidence, "that Jim thar--a man thet can shoot straight, and hez
frequent; a man thet knows every skin game goin'--that THET man Jim,"
very slowly, "hezn't really--got--any friends--'cept me--and his wife."
"Indeed?" said Mr. Breeze dryly.
"Sure! Why, you yourself didn't cotton to him--I could see THET."
Mr. Breeze felt himself redden slightly, and looked curiously at the
man. This vulgar parasite, whom he had set down as a worshiper of sham
heroes, undoubtedly did not look like an associate of Bodine's, and had
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