'Expression of yours,' he said.
'Sounds rude; but all depends _how_ you say it. I reckon I've
caught up the accent--eh?--by the quick way you looked up. . . .
I hadn't much school and never went to College: but I've studied
you, Doctor, and I'll improve.'
"'Well, then,' said I, nettled and less inclined to spare him,'
I'm sorry to contradict you, Mr. Farrell, but you are never
going to miss my company--_never, until your life's end_.'
"'What d'ye mean?' he blurted: and I suppose there was something
in my look that made him edge off an inch or two on the rustic
seat.
"'Simply this,' I answered. 'Ten or a dozen weeks ago you made
yourself the instrument to destroy something twenty times more
valuable than yourself. I am not speaking of what you killed in
me, nor of the years of application, the records, measurements,
analyses which you hoofed into nothing with no more thought than
a splay coon's for an ant-heap. Nor will I trouble you with any
tale of the personal hopes I had built on them, for you to
murder.
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