"It did look fishy, my friend. You won't mind my saying that much. Clearer heads than your jury of village store-keepers and Adirondack farmers might have given the same verdict. But old lady Gramm's responsibility hadn't begun then. It was a matter of two or three years before she came to see—as women do see things about the men they live with—that the hand which did the job was Jacob's. By that time you had disappeared into space, and she didn't feel bound to give the old chap away. She says she would have done it if it could have saved you; but since you had saved yourself, she confined her attentions to shielding Jacob. You may credit as much or as little of that as you please; but I believe the bulk of it. In any case, since it does the trick for us we have no reason to complain. Come now!"
"I'm not going to complain of anything. It's been a rum experience all through, but I can't say that, in certain aspects, I haven't enjoyed it. I have enjoyed it. If it weren't for the necessity of deceiving people who are decent to you, I'd go through it all again."
"That's game," Conquest said, approvingly, as he worked round to the hearth-rug, where he stood cutting the end of a cigar, with Ford's long figure stretched out obliquely before him.
"I would," Ford assured him. "I'd go through it all again, like a shot. It's been a lark from—I won't say from start to finish—but certainly from the minute—let me see just when!--certainly from the minute when Miss Strange beckoned to me, over old Wayne's shoulder."
An odd look came by degrees into Conquest's face—the look of pitying amusement with which one listens to queer things said by some one in delirium. He kept the cutter fixed in the end of the cigar, too much astonished to complete his task.
"Since Miss Strange did—what?"
Ford was too deeply absorbed in his own meditations to notice the tone.
"I mean, since she pulled me through."
Conquest's face broke into a broad smile.
"Are you dreaming, old chap? Or have you 'got 'em again'?"