Pete looked up quickly, and a sharp glance shot from his eyes. He was a man of sixty-five, perhaps, though he looked older, and was already as white as snow as to his hair and beard. But he was no fool, was Pete, and his glance showed that he half-understood James.
"You aer thinkin' that boy's innocent?" he asked, as he sucked at his pipe.
"Dead sartin," replied James. "Sit down and have a smoke. Try mine."
He handed out his tobacco skin, and Pete filled from it gratefully.
"Up!" he remarked, as he pulled at the pipe; "and you was thinkin' maybe that Jack——"
"Yer know what I was thinkin', Pete," exclaimed James bluntly. "Look ye here. Have yer ever been dead down on yer luck, right clean hard up agin it?"
Pete nodded, his ferrety little eyes watching the smoke curl up from the bowl, and his whole expression denoting satisfaction.
"I've been dead down on the rocks, with the pinnacles comin' clear through," he admitted, as if the recollection caused him enjoyment. "I've had fortune play me so scurvily that I couldn't see a crust anywheres, and hadn't but one friend ter turn to. Yes, James, I've knowd what it is ter be clean up agin it."
"And yer didn't want help?"
"Ye've struck it wrong. Every man wants help some day. It may be only when he's old and tottery, like me——" he stopped to smile, and watch the smoke again—"jest like me," he repeated. "Sometimes he don't want it even then. But there's others want it, soon and plenty, when they're just cuttin' their teeth. Guess Jack's one of 'em."