"Poor old Dandy!" he murmured again and again, "but for me he would be alive now."
Early in the morning Jim wakened, and in an instant Dick was by his side.
"Feel better, old boy?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm all right. Where's Braithwaite? What's the matter? Why are you looking like that? Is he—dead?"
"Yes," said Dick, and no one would have known it was the Angel speaking.
"Then I've killed him! He only went because I called him a coward."
"'Twas as much my fault as yours," said Dick. "I started it. Poor old Dandy!"
Jim did not speak again; and even when, later in the day, he went home, his mother could hardly get a word from him; but at the inquest he told the story without hiding anything, and took all the blame on his own shoulders.
"Braithwaite wouldn't have gone," he said; "only I laughed at him for being afraid."
The whole incident was so plain that the jury at once brought in a verdict of "accidental death," adding a rider that, in their opinion, the Old Fort and the bridge should be destroyed.