"That man," interrupted Gray, "means no good to him. I want to get him away before they come in contact again. If they meet to-night——"
"He won't be here," said the landlady. "He telegraphed to my good man, saying he couldn't get down till to-morrow."
"Damn!" said George, under his breath.
"As I was saying," she proceeded; "if anybody knows what that trouble is—meaning his head being wrong—if anybody knows, it's my own blessed self. A boy o' mine was just the same, a twin o' that young fellow there"—evidently indicating somebody in the same room.
"Dreadful affliction!" said Gray. "Sometimes, when I look at—at George, and think of it, it makes me that sorry for him I don't know what to do."
"Ah, I can well believe that! I was the same with little Ernest. He wouldn't have nobody touch him but me. He knew his own mother. Sometimes I used to say as he wasn't so mad after all."
"Bad thing to have meddlers," said Gray. "That's why I want to get him away. You see, we're—we're his keepers, and we want to get him back quietly to—to the asylum. Already his mind has been set against us, and if he's left much longer, we shan't get control of him. Now, if your husband could lend me a trap, we'd get off almost at once."
"I dare say that could be done."
"Much the best thing for everybody," said Gray, in pleased tones. "Much the best."
"Yes," said the landlady, going back to her light-headed son. "Many's the time he's sat in that very chair you're a-sitting in now, a-playin' with his little Billy-Gee—his little wooden horse—and a-sayin' 'Erny good boy,' all the time. Dear little feller; only seven, too. Such a one for names! Moggles, he used to call me. Deary me, to think of it!"