Archibald listened with knitted brows.
“Poor Peg!” he said softly, under his breath. “Poor little Peg!”
Ezra shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and back again.
“What’s the good of her knowing?” he asked gruffly. Archibald looked at him in blank surprise.
“Why, she’ll have to know.”
“No, she won’t,” Ezra snapped it out in his most disagreeable manner. “He’s going to die. If he don’t, he’s too crazy to be left running around free. If he dies, you and Doc can bury him on the quiet; and, if he lives, you can chuck him into the asylum. She couldn’t do anything for him, if she knew. What’s the use bothering her?”
“But you—” Archibald began in bewilderment.
“Oh, I’d be moving along sometime, anyway. What’d I stay for? And what’d I care if they think they run me out? Kind of tickles me to have ’em think I burned their barns and stole ’em blind. No use white-washing me. It wouldn’t stick. I’ll light out; and then you can tell the kid some sort of fairy story that’ll let her down easy.”
He cleared his throat, sniffed unpleasantly, and drew his sleeve across his nose.
“She’s better than most,” he said.