The windows of the room looked out straight over the lawn on to the lower end of the lake, where the sluice lay, and Geoffrey, as Harry divested himself of the blankets he had swathed round him and rubbed himself down with a rough towel, went and sat in the window-seat, looking out.
"And it's no use saying that I don't believe in the Luck," he went on; "I do believe in it, at least I think I do, which, as far as I am concerned, comes to exactly the same thing. Oh, it is nonsense!" he cried suddenly. "I don't think I really believe in it, but I like to think I do. There is the truth as near as I can get it. And yet, perhaps, that isn't the truth; perhaps I do believe in it. Oh, who knows whether I believe in it or not? I'm sure I don't."
Geoffrey did not reply for a moment. He had felt morally certain after the gun-room accident that, if danger of death again looked into Harry's face, it would be Mr. Francis who brought it there; he had even said to himself that it would be by rain that danger would come. By rain, indeed, it had been, but where, taxing ingenuity to the utmost, did Mr. Francis come in? Harry had been alone, Mr. Francis halfway to the farm. What if Harry was right?—and the thought challenged his reasonable self.
"How can you talk such utter nonsense?" he said angrily. "How can that pewter pot break down a sluice, and put a cartridge in your gun, and make you go to the ice house instead of the summerhouse?"
"'Tain't pewter!" said Harry's voice, muffled in the shirt he was putting on.
At that moment Geoffrey's eye caught sight of the figure of Mr. Francis trotting gaily through the rain down the side of the lake, from the direction of the farm, and he disappeared behind the bushes that screened the sluice from the house. Almost immediately he reappeared again, this time coming toward the house with the same lightness of step. He must have seen, thought Geoffrey, that the flood had carried away the sluice. Harry, he must have known, was probably there when it was carried away. What reconstruction of facts would fit these factors? At present none, but perhaps Mr. Francis could supply them. He rose.
"Mr. Francis is just coming in," he said, "but I do not see the farm men."
Harry came across to the window.
"They are probably following," he said. "Go down to him, Geoff, and tell him I'm all right."
"You will be down soon?"