"Yours! Yours!" I cried. "Yours! You call her "Number Three." That very name of itself is enough to shut your mouth forever. What! Do you come seriously to claim any rights over a girl, when by your own confession there are no less than two others to whom you have offered yourself? Do you mean to look me in the face, after what you yourself have told me, and say that you consider that you have any claims on Miss O'Halloran?" "Yes, I do!" cried Jack. "I do, by Jove! Look here, Macrorie. I've given you my confidence. I've told you all about my affair with her. You know that only a day or two ago I was expecting her to elope with me--" "Yes, and hoping that she wouldn't," I interrupted. "I was not. I was angry when she refused, and I've felt hard about it ever since. But she's mine all the same, and you know it." "Yours? And so is Miss Phillips yours," I cried, "and so is Mrs. Finnimore; and I swear I believe that, if I were to be sweet on Louie, you'd consider yourself injured. Hang it, man! What are you up to? What do you mean? At this rate, you'll claim every woman in Quebec. Where do intend to draw the line? Would be content if I were sweet on Miss Phillips? Wouldn't you be jealous if I were to visit the widow? And what would you say if I were seized with a consuming passion for Louie? Come, Jack--don't row; don't be quite insane. Sit down again, and let's drop the subject." "I won't drop the subject," growled Jack. "You needn't try to argue yourself out of it. You know very well that I got her first." "Why, man, at this rate, you might get every woman in America. You seem to think that this is Utah." "Come, no humbug, Macrorie. You know very well what I am to that girl." "You! you!" I cried. "Why, you have told me already that she has found you out. Hang it, man! if it comes to that, what are you in her eyes compared with me? You've been steadily humbugging her ever since you first knew her, and she's found it out But I come to her as the companion of the darkest hour of her life, as the one who saved her from death. You--good Lord!--do you pretend to put yourself in comparison with me? You, with your other affairs, and your conscious falsity to her, with me! Why, but for me, she would be drifting down the river, and lying stark and dead on the beach of Anticosti. That is what I have done for her. And what have you done? I might laughed over the joke of it before I knew her; but now, since I know her, and her, when you force me to say what you have done, I declare to you that you have wronged her, and cheated her, and humbugged her, and she knows it, and you know it, and I know it. These things may be all very well for a lark; but, when you pretend to make a serious matter of them, they look ugly. Confound it! have you lost your senses?" "You'll see whether I've lost my senses or not," said Jack, fiercely.