'Let nobody be aware that you bear this letter,' Roland whispered when an opportunity offered.
The Lifter raised his finger to his lips.
It appears that Murfrey, whose eyes were ever on the alert, noticed that Roland gave some injunctions to The Lifter, and he likewise observed the latter lay his finger upon his lips. Turning to the Captain, he muttered a few words in a voice that was inaudible, and the chief turned and said:
'Treachery has been charged against you. I do not know whether the charge is true or false. Murfrey says you are the bearer of some secret correspondence for the duellist.
'I know not whether he speaks the truth or not. But I will make no investigation, for if I did and found the charge made good, I should shoot you where you stand. I will take your word upon it.'
The Lifter did not wince under the harangue. He did not, indeed, look at his father at all, but kept his eye upon Murfrey.
'And,' said he, 'before I reply, may I ask what you ought to do to anybody guilty of slandereen? He looked with a full face of hate upon Joe. It will be perceived by this that he was not in the fullest sense 'converted;' for you 'must pray for them that persecute and calumniate you.' I am like The Lifter in this matter. I never pray for my culumniator, but I pray for guidance as to how I may crush him. My prayer, I may add, has now and again been heard.
'With respect to the charge,' resumed The Lifter, 'Roland gave me a coin and with it a slip of paper on which were written the names of certain books that he wanted me to buy for him in Muddy York. As I passed him he whispered me not to let anybody know; because I suppose he was afeered that you might object. I put my fingers upon my lips; because I thought 'twas no harm to bring the books. That's all.'
The moralist tells us that 'no lie can be lawful or innocent.' Now I take it that some of the old numbskulls who wrote such things in the church catechisms and books of that ilk ought to be drowned in the bottom of a well. A good clever lie of this sort would raise The Lifter more in my estimation than if he were able to repeat the Forty-Nine articles off by heart, or begin in the Vulgate with 'Pater Noster, qui es in Caelis,' and go through without drawing his breath to 'Sed libera nos a malo.'
'I accept your explanation,' the Captain said, and The Lifter hurried away on his errand to town.