A dark flush suffused Mr. Tunstall’s face, and he rose awkwardly to his feet.
“Oh, yes; I’ll soon be all right ag’in,” he said, with a weak attempt at a laugh. The drawl was back again—the nasal twang; but none of the others seemed to have noticed that he had used another tone a moment before. I began to fear him—to have a different conception of him—he was an enemy far more formidable than I had thought. Which was his natural tone, I wondered—and yet, on second thought, there could be no question as to that. His natural tone was the one he had used when he first came to himself, before he fully realized where he was, before he had quite got his senses back.
“Have you had such attacks before?” asked Mr. Chester.
“Oh, yes; they ain’t nothin’. I has ’em every onct in a while. Didn’t say nothin’ foolish, I hope?” he added, and shot a quick, suspicious, threatening glance at us.
“No,” said Mr. Chester, “you didn’t say a word—you didn’t even breathe, so far as I could see.”
“Only a scream at the first,” I said.
“A scream?” repeated Mr. Tunstall. “What’d I scream fer?”
Then his eyes fell upon the tumbled white robes on the ground. He gazed at them an instant, then lifted his eyes and fixed them on the two boys, with a malevolence which made me shudder.
“Oh, yes,” he said, at last, in a low, hoarse voice. “I remember, now. I remember, now!”
“I’m sure, sir,” began Dick, but Mr. Tunstall silenced him with a fierce gesture.