“If I accept your assurance as to the innocence of this man, it is none the less true that some one employed him to rob me, and his companion lost his life because of the attempt. He could not have told of this without telling who that was.”
The priest smiled, but not in a way that encouraged Trafford to hope for information, and the event proved him wise not to do so.
“If he told me aught that I have not repeated,” the other answered, “it was to obtain God’s pardon, not to invoke man’s punishment on any. Its object accomplished, the words passed as they came to the priest and not to the man.”
So Trafford was forced to let him go, none the wiser beyond what the priest chose that he should be; but as they hurried towards Millbank, he tried hard to look at all sides of the story and at last asked his companion:
“What do you think of it?”
“A batch of lies, told to a gossiping priest to be peddled out to us again,” was the curt judgment.
Even this Trafford weighed carefully before commenting on it.
“You evidently think the fellow a shrewd chap.”
“No; any one can see he’s a stupid lout; just the kind of a thing to be used for a dirty job.”
“Yet he had a long enough head to cheat the priest.”