"And why?"
"Because you owe me a grudge," said Miles, speaking rapidly—"because it is in your interest to see me go under."
"My condition provides for all that."
"Let me hear it, then."
"First tell me how you came to know the Bristos."
Miles gave Dick substantially the same story that he had already learned from Alice.
"Now listen to me," said Dick. "Instead of squatter you were bushranger. You had been in England a day or two instead of a month or two, and you had set foot in Sussex only; instead of masquerading as a fisherman you wore your own sailor's clothes, in which you swam ashore from your ship."
"Well guessed!" said Miles ironically.
"A cleverer thing was never done," Dick went on, his tone, for the moment, not wholly free from a trace of admiration. "Well, apart from that first set of lies, your first action in England was a good one. That is one claim on leniency. The account you have given me of it is quite true, for I heard the same thing from one whose lips, at least, are true!"
These last words forced their way out without his knowledge until he heard them.