“Nonsense—I—I know better.”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed Maud. “I cannot see well the working of your face, but your voice belies your words. The man was found.”
“Well, well. It is nothing to me.”
“They said he had been shot,” continued Maud, “and that he must have died in lingering agony. I saw them bring him forth—not a thread of his garments—not a hair of his head—was touched by those flames that had destroyed all else.”
“Well—well,” said Gray, “I don’t want to hear more. Will you give me the knife?”
Maud had kept her hand upon the handle of the weapon, and Gray had found no opportunity of taking her by surprise, or he would have made an endeavour to destroy the poor creature, upon whose head the chastening hand of Providence had fallen so heavily. A direct attack upon her he dared not make, for first of all he could not trust his present weak state to the chances of a struggle even with her, and secondly, such was not Jacob Gray’s way of doing things.
“Will you give me the knife?” he repeated.
“No!” said Maud. “I’m keeping it for Andrew Britton.”
“Indeed?”
“I am—I am.”