So the price be high enough you may buy him body and soul." Money enough to buy Jasper Leigh was ready to Lionel's hand; but it was Sir Oliver's money--the money that was placed at Lionel's disposal by his half-brother's open-handed bounty.

And this money he was to employ for Oliver's utter ruin! He cursed himself for a filthy, contemptible hound; he cursed the foul fiend that whispered such suggestions into his mind; he knew himself, despised himself and reviled himself until he came to swear to be strong and to go through with whatever might await him sooner than be guilty of such a baseness; the next moment that same resolve would set him shuddering again as he viewed the inevitable consequences that must attend it.
Suddenly the captain set him a question, very softly, that fired the train and blew all his lingering self-resistance into shreds.
"You'll ha' borne my warning to Sir Oliver ?" he asked, lowering his voice so as not to be overheard by the vintner who was stirring beyond the thin wooden partition.
Master Lionel nodded, nervously fingering the jewel in his ear, his eyes shifting from their consideration of the seaman's coarse, weather-tanned and hairy countenance.
"I did," he said.

"But Sir Oliver is headstrong.

He will not stir." "Will he not ?" The captain stroked his bushy red beard and cursed profusely and horribly after the fashion of the sea.

"Od's wounds! He's very like to swing if he bides him here." "Ay," said Lionel, "if he bides." He felt his mouth turn dry as he spoke; his heart thudded, but its thuds were softened by a slight insensibility which the liquor had produced in him.
He uttered the words in so curious a tone that the sailor's dark eyes peered at him from under his heavy sandy eyebrows.