“Am I?”

“Yes, of course you are but go on—I want to hear all you’ve got to say.”

“Why did you take my money, and then arrest me?”

“Because I wanted the cash; and, in the next place, I wished to save my own neck. Colonel Blood swore to hang one or the other, so I thought you might do better than myself, you perceive.”

“But suppose I were to tell Colonel Blood what I have done for you?”

“He wouldn’t believe you, that’s all.”

“I don’t know that.”

“But I do, though. If I had not thought and known so, I shouldn’t have captured you alive.”

“What then?”

“Why, would have so arranged it that you would have been a dead man, that’s all.”