“Oh, Jerry, you always were a fool!” cried Dick, angrily. “Don’t you see that it was the poor fellow they found—the drowning boy I tried to save?”
“Then you didn’t try to drown yourself, sir?”
“Drown myself! Was I likely to do such a thing? Wasn’t it enough that I ran away, like the cowardly fool I was?”
“Then you ain’t never been dead at all, then, sir?”
“Absurd!”
“And they buried the wrong man?”
“Good Heavens! what a position, Jerry! Yes,” cried Dick, startled now by the complications rising before his eyes.
“And you really are alive and hearty, and—how you’ve growed, and—and—why, of course, it is! Pay you back the money—S’Richard, why I’d—oh, my lad, my lad—I—I—I—oh, what a fool I am!”
Fool or no, Jerry Brigley broke down, and sat holding on by his companion’s hands sobbing for some moments before he uttered a loud gulp, and then seemed relieved.
Meanwhile Dick sat staring straight before him, almost unconscious of poor Jerry’s acts. The revelation he had heard was paralysing. It was horrible to think of; and, moment by moment, he began to realise how difficult it would be to convince people of his identity when he went back to claim his own.