"And I can answer that question with another," said I. "Who were in the garden at the time Mr. Herbert was to discover us?"
"The gardeners, I suppose," said he, thrusting his wig aside to scratch his head.
"It is a queer kind of gardener that wears buttons of this sort," said I; and I pulled the button from my pocket, and held it before his eyes in the palm of my hand.
He bent forward, examined the button, and again looked at me inquiringly.
"I picked it up," I explained, "on a little plot of trampled grass in the Wilderness on the next morning."
Rookley burst into a laugh and slapped his thighs.
"Lord! Mr. Clavering," he cried, and rising from his chair he walked briskly about the room, "your button is something too small to carry so weighty an accusation."
"Nay," I answered, smiling in my turn, "the button, though small, is metal solid enough. It depends upon how closely it is sewn to the cloth of my argument. It is true that I picked up the button on the morning that the soldiers came for me, but I was in the house on the afternoon before, and I saw——"
Jervas Rookley stopped in his walk, and his laughter ceased with the sound of his steps.
"You were in the house?" His mouth so worked that he pronounced the words awry. "You were in the house?"