“’Bout you, or ’bout young miss?”
“Both, man, both!”
“Nay, not it. I see a deal, because I’m a man as thinks, doctor. No; I don’t s’pose any one knows on it. But never you mind, doctor; gels always will be gels and listen to chaps like Squire Tom. But I say,” whispered the old man, with a chuckle, after crossing to the window and seeing that the print curtain was well drawn over the broken patch through which the leaden tobacco jar had been hurled, “did you give it him well?”
North groaned.
“Why, doctor! Took more bad?”
The old man glanced at the hand he had laid upon the doctor’s shoulder, and wiped it, for it was wet with blood; and the sight of the hideous smear seemed to raise a terrible thought in his brain.
“Why, doctor,” he said, in a low whisper; “you haven’t—you haven’t hurt him much?”
North seized the old man’s arm, and sat gazing wildly at him for a few moments without speaking. He was battling with the mental confusion that troubled him and kept him in a state of hesitancy, in which his mind drifted like a derelict at sea.
He mastered it at last, and began to see clearly that, from what the old sexton knew, he must continue to make him his confidant. There could be no half measures. For his own safety he must tell him all; though even now there was Leo, who knew of the encounter.
No; she dare not speak, suspect what she might. For her reputation’s sake, she must hold her tongue.