“I don’t understand it,” remarked Orlando. “As you say, it’s weird, his sitting there like that with the reins in his hands. I don’t understand it!”
“I saw you getting down from the wagon,” remarked Scarsdale meaningly.
“Say, do you really believe—?” began Orlando without agitation, but with a sudden sense of his own false position.
“It ain’t a matter of belief,” the other declared. “If there’s an inquest, I’ve got to tell what I’ve seen. You know that, don’t you?”
“That’s all right,” replied Orlando. “You’ve got to tell what you’ve seen, and so have I. I guess the truth will out. Come, let’s move him on to Tralee. We’ll lay him down in the bottom of the wagon, and I’ll lead his horses with a halter.... No,” he added, changing his mind, “you lead my horses, and I’ll drive him home.”
A moment afterwards, as the procession made its way to Tralee, Scarsdale said to himself:
“He must have nerves like iron to drive Mazarine home, if he killed him. Well, he’s got them, and still they call him Giggles as if he was a silly girl!”
CHAPTER XVII. THE SUPERIOR MAN
Students of life have noticed constantly that moral distinctions are not matters of principle but of certain peremptory rules found on nice calculations of the social mind. In the field of crime, responsibility is most often calculated, not upon the crime itself, but upon how the thing is done.