“You say he had on black clothes, Mary. Are you sure of that?”
“’Deed I am that, sorr.”
“Did you have time to notice the kind of a coat he wore?—how it was cut, I mean.”
“I did that. It was as like to the wan ye’re wearing as two peas in a pod. On’y but I knowed ye’d gone down to breakfast, I might have been misdeluded intirely till I saw the oogly face av him.”
Inasmuch as both garments had been cut by the same tailor from the same measurements, there was every reason for the similarity; but Brant did not know this, and he tallied his score and went on:
“At first you said he had black hair, and just now you told Mrs. Seeley it was brown. Take time to think about it, and tell me which it was.”
“’Deed, sorr, it was both—lastewise, it was that darrk it might be ayther wan.”
“Was it long, or short?”
“Nayther the wan nor the t’other; joosht betwixt and betune, like.”
“Exactly.” Brant nodded assent. The answers came so readily, pointing step by step to the inevitable conclusion, that they drew out a leading question: