"No, not a word," answered Joe the potman. "Couldn't. Tried to nod once when I spoke to 'im, but it seemed to make 'im bleed faster."
"Know him, Cap'en Nat?" asked the sergeant.
"No," answered my grandfather, "I don't know him. Might ha' seen him hanging about p'raps. But then I see a lot doin' that."
I wondered if Grandfather Nat had already forgotten about the silver watch with the M on it, or if he had merely failed to recognise the man. But I remembered what he had said in the morning, after he had bought the spoons, and I reflected that I had best hold my tongue.
And now voices without made it known that the shore police were here, with a stretcher; and presently, with a crowding and squeezing in the little bar-parlour that drove me deeper into my corner and farther under the shelf, the uncomely figure was got from the floor to the stretcher, and so out of the house.
It was plain that my grandfather was held in good regard by the police; and I think that his hint that a drop of brandy was at the service of anybody who felt the job unpleasant might have been acted on, if there had not been quite as many present at once. When at last they were gone, and the room clear, he kicked into a heap the strip of carpet that the dead man had lain on; and as he did it, he perceived me in my corner.
"What—you here all the time, Stevy?" he said. "I thought you'd gone upstairs. Here—it ain't right for boys in general, but you've got a turn; drink up this."
I believe I must have been pale, and indeed I felt a little sick now that the excitement was over. The thing had been very near, and the blood tainted the very air. So that I gulped the weak brandy and water without much difficulty, and felt better. Out in the bar Mr. Cripps's thin voice was raised in thrilling description.
Feeling better, as I have said, and no longer faced with the melancholy alternatives of crying or being ill, I bethought me of my grandfather's tobacco-pouch. "You dropped your pouch, Gran'father Nat," I said, "and I picked it up when I ran out."
And with that I pulled out of my jacket pocket—not the pouch at all; but a stout buckled pocket-book of about the same size.