CHAPTER XX. A MEETING
Harry Bartlett walked from the court a free man, physically, but not mentally. He felt, and others did also, that there was a stain on him—something unexplained, and which he would not, or could not, clear up—the quarrel with Mr. Carwell just before the latter's death. And even to Viola, when, in the seclusion of her home, she asked Harry about it after the trial, or rather, the verdict, he replied:
“I can not tell. It was nothing that concerns you or me or this case. I will never tell.”
And Colonel Ashley, hearing this, pondered over it more and more.
The little green book was all but forgotten during these days, and as for the rods, lines, and reels, Shag arranged them, polished them and laid them out, in hourly expectation of being called on for them, but the call did not come. The colonel was after bigger fish than dwelt in the sea or the rivers that ran into the sea.
It was a week after the rather unsatisfactory verdict of the coroner's jury that Bartlett, out in his “Spanish Omelet,” came most unexpectedly on Captain Gerry Poland, some fifty miles from Lakeside. The captain was in his big machine, and he seemed surprised on meeting Bartlett.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Then you are—”
“Out, at any rate,” was the somewhat bitter reply. “Where have you been, Gerry?”
“Away. I couldn't stand it around there.”
“I suppose you know they have been looking for you?”