"Who dropped a shoe from the little one's closet, into the water under the dock? Did you?"
"No." His reply came quick and sharp.
"But," I insisted, "you have had something to do with this child's disappearance."
He did not answer. A sullen look was displacing the fire of resolve in the eyes I saw sinking slowly before mine.
"I will not acknowledge it," he muttered; adding, however, in what was little short of a growl: "Not yet, not till it becomes my duty to avenge innocent blood."
"You foretold the date."
"Drop it."
"You were in league with the abductor," I persisted. "I declare to your face, in spite of all the vaunted scruples with which you seek to blind me to your guilt, that you were in league with the abductor, knowing what money Mrs. Ocumpaugh would pay. Only he was too smart for you, and perhaps too unscrupulous. You would stop short of murder, now that you have got religion. But his conscience is not so nice and so you fear—"
"You do not know what I fear and I am not going to tell you. It is enough that I am conscious of my own uprightness and that I say, Find the child! You have incentive enough."
It was true and it was growing stronger every minute.