"How indeed, Tobias?" said Minna.
Tobias still trembled. What a shock that bold, bad, unscrupulous man had given to the nerves of that boy. His bodily health might be restored, and his mind once more be brought back to sanity, but if Tobias Ragg were to live to the age of a patriarch, the name of Todd would be to him a something yet to shrink from, and the tone of his nervous system could never be what it once was. Minna looked up in his face, and the colonel, too, gazed fully upon him, so that Tobias found he was absolutely called upon to say something.
"Yes," he began, "I remember that people came to the shop, and—and that they never went out of it again."
"Can you particularise any instance?"
"Yes, the gentleman with the dog."
Colonel Jeffery showed by his countenance how much he was interested.
"Go on," he said. "What about the gentleman with the dog?"
"I don't know how it was," added Tobias, "but that circumstance seemed to tell more upon my fancy than any other. I suppose it was the conduct of the dog."
"What sort of a dog was it?"
"A large handsome dog, and Todd would not let it remain in the shop, so his master made him wait outside."