"I didn't, neither," interrupted Barlow. "Ben was asleep and dreamed it all."
—"Send him aboard a ship," continued the lawyer, paying no heed to the breaking of his speech; and they wanted to know right where he had kept himself when Bob and Watson were captured. Where was he the night before? Barlow listened attentively to all the lawyer had to say, as if the news was quite new to him, and more than one in the courtroom believed that he had heard it for the first time. When Mr. Gibbons asked him this question he said:
"I don't know where the boy is any more than the man in the moon. I was around my house the whole evening except about an hour, when I went into the back room to take a short nap; and my man Samson knows it. Just 'cause ole Ben Watson fell asleep and dreamed that we were going to kidnap him and send him off to sea, you suspect me when anything turns up."
"You are strongly blamed for everything that has happened in regard to men going off to sea," said Mr. Gibbons.
"But that ain't the kind of proof you want here," said Barlow. "You want to know I did it. You can't put your thumb on a man that I have kidnapped and sent off to sea."
That was just the trouble with Mr. Gibbons. He could not prove anything, although he was like hundreds of others in the village—he suspected Barlow had a hand in most of it.
"You ask any of these men around here," continued Barlow. "They were all around my saloon last night."
The lawyer tried by every means in his power to get Barlow to confess where he was during the hour he was absent from his saloon, but all he could gain was that he was in the back room and fast asleep. He hadn't any idea what had become of Bob Nellis. As he paused a moment in his questioning, Mr. Sprague arose from his seat and moved into a remote corner of the room, and Mr. Gibbons followed him. The two gentlemen engaged in an earnest whisper, and finally the lawyer said:
"I haven't got to that case yet. He is easily frightened, I know, but I want to get the dead wood on him, sure."
Mr. Sprague was speaking of Captain Nellis, and of the scenes Barlow had witnessed on the stormy morning, which he wouldn't tell to anybody. Mr. Sprague wanted Mr. Gibbons to take that up and question Barlow, but the lawyer was not ready to do it yet. He didn't expect Barlow would tell the truth (he knew that he had told him a pack of lies during this examination); and although Mr. Layton was the man who was easily frightened, he was anxious to confront him with the strongest testimony.