"I?... Commerce should be building, not gambling, a'n't that so? Well, I think Uncle John believes that, but is moved to gamble all the same. The great ventures draw his heart--and why not, seeing that in the past he's won them? Only, now...." "You might as well say it: now he's old, and in trouble, and the times themselves are changing, so everyone seems to think. Tell him how you see it. I say tell him, little brother." "Can't you be sensible, Muttonhead?" "Sensible--mm-yas. Well, tell him, maybe not that last morsel of your wisdom, but tell him at least about the little companions for _Hebe_, and short voyages for _Artemis_." "I'm to instruct a man of seventy, when he won't even hear to my signing on to learn a bit of seamanship and so be of use to him?" "You could tell him anything. You only need speak in a plain voice and never let anyone stop you from smiling in your own peculiar manner. I say this fully understumbling that in this moment I stand to you _in loco Gideonis Hibborum_." "Oh, God damn it, Ru, whenever I'm dead in earnest you're laughing on a mountaintop--yes, and when I think something comical you're a little old man a thousand years old." "Only a thousand? As best I can discover from perusal of ancient records, I was born during the government of Pericles of Athens, _circa_ five hundred years before the birth of Christ. Plutarch doesn't specifically mention me--that's the slipshod scholarship of his times for you, obliging a man to read between the lines. It so happens I was _not_ laughing when I urged you to tell that to Uncle John. And now, what was it about yesterday evening at the tavern that you didn't tell the Constable?" "The--Constable----" "Yes, Ben, and yes. One-eyed man. Lion Tavern. Some part of that untold was hurting thee. What was it? Note that I stand here in the road, my bare face hung decently in front of my brains, not laughing." "Good God! Was I so----" "No one in that room has my eyes and ears." "I see.... Will you undertake not to speak of it to anyone?" "Of course, if you charge me so." "I do. It was simply a fleeting impression I had, that while I had turned to see Ball and Dyckman leaving the tavern, Shawn also had done--something or other. Looked back, I thought, where that one-eyed man was sitting, just before he rose and followed them out. Now understand, Ru: I was drank already. It was nothing more than a fancy." "But I know your eyes." "No _no_! I was drunk, and did not truly see it anyway. Even if true, why should it mean anything? Why should it stick in my mind?" "That of course is the question." "Now what do you mean?" "What is it in Shawn that should make the thought trouble you?... What in fact do you know about Mr. Shawn?" "Why--why, he is a man of pleasant conversation--mostly. Of--of poetic spirit, wouldn't you say? Possessed of some learning too. He hath read Physiologus." "That is learning? And now again you're holding something back, but I am no Malachi Derry."