"No, uncle. I'll take his own word for it that he'd do his duty and fight it out to the bitter end."
"Mightn't he have said so to his wife to quiet her? And even if it wasn't in his mind then, it might have come suddenly afterwards. When a man's in the state he was, there's no telling what he might do on the spur of the moment. I don't throw doubt on Mrs. Death's story, though I've heard some queer stories in my time and believed in them at the time they were told, only to find out a little later that there wasn't one word of truth in them. The lengths that people'll go to whose minds are unsettled is astonishing. Astonishing!" he repeated reflectively. "How often do you hear of men giving themselves up as murderers when they're as innocent as the babe unborn!"
"Suppose we try and follow Mrs. Death's story out, uncle," said Dick.
"Go ahead. Upon my word, Dick, I almost fancy I hear that poor child's cough now--the ghost of a cough travelling through the fog. It will make a ghost of her, I'm afraid, before she's many weeks older."
"Poor little mite!" said Dick, and paused a moment. "Uncle Rob, you've the kindest heart that ever beat."
"Pooh, pooh, my lad, the fog's got into your foolish noddle."
"You don't deserve," pursued Dick, very earnestly, "to have trouble come upon you unaware----"
"Dick!" cried Inspector Robson, startled by the unusual earnestness with which the words were spoken no less than by the words themselves. "Trouble come upon me unaware! Do you know what you are saying, my lad?"
"I was thinking," said Dick, in some confusion, "of the trouble that comes unexpectedly to many people without their being prepared for it."
"Oh, that! Well, when such trouble comes we've got to bear it and meet it like men."