I would shoot you now for tuppence.
"At this the cur dodges under the table.

Then Cloete goes out, and as he turns in the street--you know, little fishermen's cottages, all dark; raining in torrents, too--the other opens the window of the parlour and speaks in a sort of crying voice-- "You low Yankee fiend--I'll pay you off some day.
"Cloete passes by with a damn bitter laugh, because he thinks that the fellow in a way has paid him off already, if he only knew it." * * * * * My impressive ruffian drank what remained of his beer, while his black, sunken eyes looked at me over the rim.
"I don't quite understand this," I said.

"In what way ?" He unbent a little and explained without too much scorn that Captain Harry being dead, his half of the insurance money went to his wife, and her trustees of course bought consols with it.

Enough to keep her comfortable.

George Dunbar's half, as Cloete feared from the first, did not prove sufficient to launch the medicine well; other moneyed men stepped in, and these two had to go out of that business, pretty nearly shorn of everything.
"I am curious," I said, "to learn what the motive force of this tragic affair was--I mean the patent medicine.