The rector looked round as if he were about to speak, but he altered his mind, and the three pupils left the room, Distin going up to his chamber without a word, while attracted by the darkness Gilmore and Macey strolled out through the open porch into the grounds.
“Suppose he dies?” said Macey, almost unconsciously repeating the constable’s words.
“Oh, I say, don’t talk like that,” cried Gilmore. “It isn’t likely, and you shouldn’t have turned against poor old Distie as you did.”
“I couldn’t help it,” said Macey, sadly. “You’d have thought the same if the doctor had let you go up to see poor old Weathercock. It was horrid. His face is dreadful, and his arms are black and blue from the wrist to the shoulder.”
“But Dis declared that he hadn’t seen him,” cried Gilmore.
“I hope he hadn’t, for it’s too horrid to think a fellow you mix with could be such a wretch.”
Gilmore turned sharply round to his companion, but it was too dark to see his face. There was something, however, in his tone of voice which struck him as being peculiar. It did not sound confident of Distin’s innocence. There was a want of conviction in his words too, and this set Gilmore thinking as to the possibility of Distin having in a fit of rage and dislike quarrelled with and then beaten Vane till the stick was broken and his victim senseless.
The idea grew rapidly as he stood there beside Macey in the darkness, and he recalled scores of little incidents all displaying Distin’s dislike of his fellow-pupil; and as Gilmore thought on, a conscious feeling of horror, almost terror, crept over him till his common sense began to react and argue the matter out so triumphantly that in a voice full of elation he suddenly and involuntarily exclaimed:
“It’s absurd! He couldn’t.”
“What’s absurd? Who couldn’t,” cried Macey, starting from a reverie.