After a silence she asked, “How did you know I was there?”
“I thought it likely.”
He told her of his talk with Hicks in the cell, and how Shays, the shoemaker, had come to him that morning, but he omitted the fact that the chisel had been “used on Coglan.” Passing that point, he went on, comfortably comforting.
“You know, people don't own all the miscellaneous consequences of what they do. For instance, I knew Coglan. He was a blackguard and loafer, and generally drunk, and his death was rather a judicious selection. Hicks was a curious man. Maybe he wasn't quite sane. He jumped into the river on his own notion, to the happy relief of the public, which might have had scruples about hanging him. Still, you must see that as you didn't arrange all these social benefits, they'll have to be credited to your good luck, if they're credited at all. Aidee helped him to break jail, which was natural enough. It's a debatable moral maybe, if anyone wants to debate it, but who wants to? I'm no casuist, anyway. He shouldn't have come to you. But since he did, why, of course you'd do something of the kind, same as the wind blows. I know you, Milly. Is it your part in it that troubles you? You'd better take my judgment on it.”
“What is it?” she said, half audibly.
“My judgment? Only that I want you for myself.”
He went on quietly after a pause: “There are objections to interfering with the law, if your conscience means that. Those who try it, I think, don't often know what they're doing. If they do it theoretically, they're staking a small experience against a big one. The chances of being right are mainly against them. Aren't they? It looks so. Your getting mixed with that kind of thing or people, is—would be, of course, rather hard on us, on Mr. Champney and me. But your nerve was good. Is that what you want my judgment on?”
They turned up the path to the Champney house.
“You knew all about it!” she said hurriedly. “But you don't understand. It was because I thought him so great and noble, and I do! I do! Oh, he is! But I'm not brave at all. No, you don't know! He asked me to help, and it was so dark and painful, what he meant to do before he came again. It frightened me. He asked me to marry him, and break off everything here, and I was afraid! I'm a coward! I wouldn't do it because I was afraid. I'm a coward.”
“Did, did he?” said Hennion comfortably. “That was good nerve, too.”