The ring lay on the table between us. Colonel Ray had not yet taken it up. In grim silence he listened to my faltering words. When I finished he smiled upon me as one might upon a child that needed humouring.
"So," he said, slipping the ring upon his finger, "you have saved me from the hangman. What remains? Your reward, eh?"
"It may seem to you," I answered hotly, "a fitting subject for jokes. I am sorry that my sense of humour is not in touch with yours. You are a great traveller, and you have shaken death by the hand before. For me it is a new thing. The man's face haunts me! I cannot sleep or rest for thinking of it—as I have seen it dead, and as I saw it alive pressed against my window that night. Who was he? What did he want with me?"
"How do you know," Ray asked, "that he wanted anything from you?"
"He looked in at my window."
"He might have seen me enter."
Then I told him what I had meant to keep secret.
"He asked for me in the village. He was directed to my cottage."
Ray had been filling his pipe. His fingers paused in their task. He looked at me steadily.
"How do you know that?" he asked.