"Didn't you do it, you sneak?" he demanded, his upper lip curling back, showing his fangs. "Don't you dare to tell me you have failed me!"
Travers' accustomed nervousness had vanished. He was perfectly calm as he stood within arm's length of the infuriated Marston.
"I'm the man to make a fuss," he answered, "for you steered me into a hole which nearly cost me my life. I was discovered, captured, and had to tell all the business to get off with a whole skin!"
Marston's face grew black, and he shook in his track with rage.
"You coward! You traitor! Who was there to capture you, and wring anything from you? Tell me, before I knock you down!"
Travers pushed back his coat sleeves and held out his wrists. Each was ringed with purplish bands, and swollen. Then he related his experience in detail, and ended by delivering, word for word, the message which Glenning had sent. As Marston listened his rage rose up and choked him. At the conclusion of the recital he was wild, and moved about threshing the air with his fists. When he at length came to a standstill his face was the colour of ashes, and he was shaking from the violence of his emotion.
"He said that, did he? The upstart! He'll shoot me, will he? He's going to tell me what to do, and what not to do! I'll attend to him! He'd better have stayed where he came from."
Then, muttering to himself as was his wont when enraged, he wheeled and went towards the house, leaving Travers to look out for himself.
The landlord of the Union House did not tarry long. He had done a thing which yesterday he would not have believed himself capable of doing. Now he went slowly down to the yard gate, wondering at his bravery, got into a wornout road-cart which he had borrowed in town from a country friend, and began his return trip.
When Glenning had dispatched a hasty breakfast he sought the clerk in the hotel office and told him to have his bill ready some time that forenoon. That worthy at once evinced a loquacious interest in the new doctor's affairs, and would fain have inquired his departing guest's plans for the future, but John merely replied that he had no intention of leaving town, and went up to his room. Here he was soon joined by Tom Dillard, who came in wearing the most dejected air possible, tendered a perfunctory good morning to John's hearty greeting, and sank upon the edge of the bed, his round, soft face wofully elongated.