“I don’t know, sir. Not half an hour—I’d swear to that. I gave him long enough to write a letter, and then I come back to see if he was ready to go.”
“Let me protest,” cried Morris indignantly. “No such letter was written for or delivered to me; that I declare.”
“Pray be calm, sir,” said the Colonel judicially. “You can ask this man any questions when I have done with him.—Now, my man, go on. Did you find this gentleman where you left him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he gave you a letter to deliver to Mr Morris?”
“No, sir,” cried Wrench sharply. “I’d forgotten all about it till you began arxing me questions like this. When I come in he got up in a disappointed sort of way and began tearing up the letter he had written quite small, and throwing it into the waste-paper basket. ‘It’s no use, my lad,’ he said. ‘I can’t say in a letter one-hundredth part’—I ain’t sure, sir, he didn’t say a thousandth-part—‘of what I want to tell Mr Morris. I’ll stay in the town to-night, and come and see Mr Morris in the morning.’”
“And did he come and see Mr Morris in the morning?”
Morris half-rose in his chair, but sat down again.
“No, sir; and I haven’t seen him from that day to this, though I had often seen them together before.”
“That will do, my man,” said the Colonel quietly.—“Now, Mr Morris; you wish to ask this man some questions?”