A few minutes after, we bade each other good-night, and wended our way quietly homeward.
My experience was singular, after parting with my young friend—not meaning to imply that anything unusual occurred to me; but the mental processes to which I was subjected that evening, in the light of subsequent events, were very peculiar, to say the least.
I am convinced that the inciting cause was the remark made by Ben Mayberry to the effect that he believed the seedy individual was a confederate of Burkhill, and that the two were perfecting a scheme for robbing one of the banks—most likely the Mechanics’.
“Ben is right,” I said to myself. “His bright mind has enabled him to grasp the truth by intuition, as a woman sometimes does when a man has been laboring for hours to reach the same point.”
But before I could satisfy myself that the boy was right, a still stronger conviction came to me that he was wrong. The men were not pals—as they are called among the criminal classes—and they were not arranging some plan of robbery.
While I was clear on this point, I was totally unable to form any theory to take the place of the one I had demolished.
Who was the pretended John Browning, and what was the dark scheme that was being hatched “in our midst,” as the expression goes?
These were the questions which presented themselves to me, and which I could not answer in a manner thoroughly satisfactory to myself.
“They are all wrong—everybody is wrong!” I exclaimed to myself; “whatever it is that is in the wind, no one but the parties themselves knows its nature.”
This was the conclusion which fastened itself in my mind more firmly the longer I thought.