“The boy has lost his senses because his trick’s burst up,” he said, in an undertone. Then to Philip: “Be silent, sir! Follow me, both of you, to the house this minute! The more you say the more you expose yourself. We will see what is best to do about you in a few moments.”
“If you don’t believe me, send to Chantico Island and bring Mr. and Mrs. Probasco to stand up for us. Or get Mr. Clagg, the lawyer, to tell you what he knows about him. I don’t deny he is Mr. Jennison. But he is a bad man—he is half-a-dozen bad men, besides. He keeps his mask on for you as for the most of the world. Look at him. Can’t you see he knows I am speaking the truth.”
“A constable will quiet your tongue, my boy, soon enough,” exclaimed Jennison in haughty wrath. But Philip’s acquaintance with some facts and names last mentioned must have astonished and confused him somewhat. “You are a young blackguard of the first water, and shall be put in a place you ought to have been familiar with long ago. Will you hold your tongue and follow Mr. Banger?”
“A constable is a thing I’ve no fear of! Let me be put where any one likes. The truth will get me out of it soon enough. Mr. Banger, that man tried to steal Gerald the day we left the Ossokosee. He tried to get me to give him up to him on the Old Province. He is a kidnaper.”
“Peters,” began Mr. Banger, “I warn you—”
“I am not Samuel Peters. I am Philip Touchtone. Ask all Ossokosee County.”
His eyes flashed, and he threw back the false name with infinite disdain.
“You choose a fine alias—that of an unconvicted felon, a burglar’s cat’s-paw. Banger, I knew a man of that name once.”
“Ah!” cried Touchtone, “a man—that you knew! The man that you yourself told me you knew! I believe you did! and that you could clear the stain on his memory to-day by something you have always known, too, about that miserable charge. Mr. Banger, my father was Reginald Touchtone, who was accused of—”
Mr. Banger interrupted him sharply.