He looked at my father as he spoke, but elicited no response. It was palpable that the heavy potations of the night had so deadened the latter’s faculties as to make him incapable for the moment of realizing the full enormity of the sight before him.
“Mark me,” said the doctor; “it’s a plain case, I say, nothing out of the way; no complications. The wretched boy to all intents and purposes has been drowned.”
“Who drowned him?” said my father. He spoke thickly, stupidly; but I started, with a dreadful feeling that the locked jaws must relax and denounce me before them all.
Seeing his hopeless state, the doctor took my father’s arm and led him from the room. Zyp still clung to my brother.
“Cover it up,” whispered Jason. “He isn’t a pretty sight!”
“He wasn’t a pretty boy,” muttered Peggy, reluctantly hiding the dreadful face; “To a old woman’s view it speaks of more than his deserts. Nobody’ll come to look at me, I expect.”
“You heard what the doctor said?” asked Jason, looking across at me.
“Yes.”
“Drowned—you understand? Drowned, Renny?”
“Drowned,” I repeated, mechanically.