Tomlinson sat gazing at them stupidly, with the veins on his bronzed forehead swollen, and a dusky hue in his face. Ingleby was troubled as he watched him, and Leger leaned forward in his seat as though in a state of tense expectancy, but still the faint smile flickered in Hetty's eyes. For almost a minute they could hear the wailing of the pines and the rain falling on the roof. Then Tomlinson spoke.
"I fired once—at a deer. That's all," he said.
Ingleby was conscious at once of a certain sense of shame and an intense relief, for he recognized the truth in the miner's voice, and Sewell had set out with relentless effectiveness the view the prosecution might be expected to take. The latter laughed as he glanced at Hetty.
"You would not have believed he did it if I had talked for hours?" he asked.
"No," said Hetty simply.
Sewell made her a little inclination, and then turned to the rest with a smile.
"We have only reason to guide us, and we argue clumsily," he said. "Women, we are told, have none—in their case it apparently isn't necessary. They were made differently. Insight, it seems, goes along with the charity that believes no evil."
It was not evident that Hetty quite understood him, for she sat looking at the fire with hands crossed in her lap, and Sewell turned to Tomlinson.
"I think the boys would believe you, as we do, but that, after all, scarcely goes very far. We have Esmond and the corporal to consider, and they are certainly not troubled with instinctive perceptions or any excess of charity. What is more to the purpose, they wouldn't try you here."
Tomlinson made a little forceful gesture. "Now, if I'd nobody else to think of I'd stop right where I am; but there's an old woman back there in Oregon who's had trouble with the rest of us—'most all she could bear—and half of what I took out of the claim was to go to her. She was just to sit still and be happy, and never work any more. I guess it would break her heart if they hung me here in Canada."