'Stony is an assumed name. Cannon is his real name—Peter Cannon.'
'That is the name. But I cannot understand. My head fails me. I am utterly bewildered!'
'You'll hear Stony's story? He is in his tent.'
'Not now. You have overwhelmed: me. For God's sake, give me time to straighten things out!'
Jim sat in silence for some minutes, but the excitement lingered. He drifted into questions, and plied the other like a cross-examining lawyer eager to trap a witness; but Ryder knew every detail of the family history. He told Jim of a birthmark on his own body. He described the furnishing of the home in Chisley much as it remained within Jim's memory.
'You have not mentioned our sister,' he said.
'She killed herself.' Jim spoke with blunt brutality. He had no energy for equivocation.
Ryder accepted this piece of news in the spirit of a man steeled to the keenest strokes of Fate.
'She was a beautiful girl,' he said. 'I remember I loved her dearly.'
'You speak as if it were fifty years ago.'