"No, but—how can I tell you!"
"Don't," said I, for she was clearly in a new distress.
"I must! He wants to marry me—so he says. He never wanted before. But I did not betray him. I have saved him—he will have it so—so I am to be his wife! Oh, Mr. Bower, it is the worst insult of all! I told him so, just before you came in."
"Then that was the trouble," said I. "It rather disappoints me; I am counting on a row between those two. But it will come. Cheer up, Miss I'Anson; let him leave me out of irons twenty-four hours longer, and I'll play a hand myself—for you and the bank!"
And so I talked, trying with all my might to comfort the poor child in her extremity. She was little more; nineteen, she told me. There were elder sisters married, and a brother gone home to Cambridge. He would have to leave there now; and who would pay his passage back to Melbourne? The robbery seemed to spell certain ruin to the I'Ansons, at all events in their own belief; but now at least we knew who had drawn the cartridges from the bank revolver; and I fancy they all exaggerated the element of personal responsibility.
I did my best to reassure Miss Enid on the point; nor did I leave a comfortable word unsaid that I could hit upon. So noon, and afternoon, found us talking still across the cuddy table. Luncheon in this pirate's craft was evidently a movable feast, to-day indefinitely postponed. Enid looked at her watch and found it after three o'clock; we had thought it one; but about half-past three the house door was flung open and in strode Deedes. He did not look at us, but snatched a repeating-rifle out of a locker, and would have gone without a word but for Enid I'Anson.
The girl was terrified. "What are you going to do with it?" she cried; and he paused in the doorway, filling it with his broad shoulders, so that I could see nothing but blue sky without.
"There's a big bird in our wake—another mollyhawk!" said Deedes, as I thought with a lighter look. "I'm going to have pots at it. That's all."
"Cruel always," said the girl, as we heard shot after shot in quick succession. But I went to the door, and then turned back as if with an altered mind. I had found it locked.
Ere I could regain my seat, a new thing happened. A bullet came clean through the deck-house, passed over Enid's head, and must have abode in my brain had I sat a minute longer where I had been sitting for hours.