“We have had too much else to think about; too many little diversions, as you might say. But I’m hoping she isn’t going to insist upon making a horrible example of me for my apparent fickleness.”
“‘Too many little diversions’,” Tregarvon echoed. “That reminds me: I can remember you and the others pulling us out of the crevice—Hartridge and me—and after that, a stretcher was made for Hartridge and we used up an age or so getting back to the glade. Am I right, so far?”
“It was something like that; yes.”
“And when we came into the old burying-ground the motor-car had been run down opposite the tool-house, and its headlamps made everything look ghastly. The judge was sitting on the door-step with his face hidden in his hands, and Rucker’s cot was standing in the open under the lights with a blanketed corpse lying upon it. Who was the dead man, Poictiers?”
Carfax shook his head. “Call it a bad dream,” he said soothingly. “The cracked skull was beginning to get in its work. You didn’t see any dead man.”
Tregarvon closed his eyes wearily. “It’s passing strange how a little knock on the head can mix things. I could swear that I saw the judge and the dead man and the car just as I have described them. Let it go, and tell me about Richardia.”
Carfax seemed suddenly embarrassed. “I—I don’t know as there is much to tell,” he stammered. “She—she is well, I believe.”
Tregarvon raised himself on an elbow.
“You’re keeping something back,” he protested. “Is she—is she—married?”
“Oh, no; nothing of that sort,” was the hasty reply. “She has been here to see you—she and her father—quite often; that is, as often as possible. I have fetched them in the car, you know. They have left nothing undone that could be done.”