He had drawn very close, and his grasp on the Colonel’s arm, that had once been so firm-fleshed and sinewy, seemed to crush the collapsed muscles into the very bone. The old man winced with the pain, but stood firm.
“I’m with you, heart and soul, always. Command me. But, my dear boy, this is impracticable. Let’s get a roustabout to row.”
The intensifying grip might really have broken the old man’s bone.
“Not for your life—never a whisper to any other living creature! Only you can do this. I—I—I should not be believed.”
“Not believed! You!” cried Colonel Kenwynton in a tone of such indignant, vicarious, insulted pride, that what self-control the other man possessed broke down; he flung his arms about the old man’s quivering frame, bowed his head on the Colonel’s shoulder and sobbed aloud.
“Not even you would believe me—if you knew—if you knew what I have been—what I am.”
“Exactly what I do know,” said the Colonel, sturdily. “You are overcome by your emotions, dear old fellow. You are overwrought. We will put an end to this, sir. Come, halloo the boat. I can’t halloo, Cap—think of that for me!—damn this cough! Halloo the boat, and tell the mate to send us a roustabout to paddle. Or, hadn’t we better take the yawl? That dug-out looks tricky—and, by God, man, it’s leaky.” He had advanced to the brink where the craft lay.
“No, no,” cried the other, “not a breath, not a whisper. It would frustrate all.” Then impressively, “Colonel Kenwynton, strange things have come about in this country because of the war. The rich are the poor; the right are the wrong; the incompetent sit bridling in the places that the capable have builded; an old paper, an old treasure, lost time out of mind, would reverse some lives, by God! And I hold the secret, like an omnipotent fate. There must be no miscarriage of justice here, Colonel Kenwynton.”
The old man’s eyes stared through the dusk like an owl’s.
“You didn’t call me out here at this time of night to talk of titles to property and acts of justice, Hugh Treherne, in this marsh—why, there ain’t a bull-frog left here.”