“Well, what is it, then, if you do know it?”
“Gray, to be sure.”
“Gray!” cried Learmont, with so sharp a cry, that the man jumped again; and would have fallen had not Learmont clutched him tightly by the arm.
“Ye—ye—yes,” stammered the drunken man, in whom the reader has already recognised Sheldon, the waterman, to whom Gray had proposed the murder of Britton.
“You are sure? on your life—on your soul, you are sure the name was Gray?”
The man looked in the countenance of Learmont, as well as the darkness would permit him, and answered, not without evident trepidation,—
“Gray—yes—Gray—it—it was. I shouldn’t have known it—but, you see, the boy stopped at the window to cry—”
“To cry?—well—and then?”
“Then, he said, ‘Can this man, Gray, really be of my kindred? Do we think alike?’ says he, ‘do we’—now, hang me, if I recollect what he said.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” suddenly laughed Learmont. “You are brave and acute. Ha, ha! You have found me out, I see. I am Gray. Ha, ha!”