The carrier nodded his head.
So Tackleton went to the door and he, too, kicked and knocked; and he, too, failed to get any reply. But he thought of trying the handle of the door, and as it opened easily, he peeped in, went in, and soon came running out again.
“He’s gone!” said Tackleton; “and the window’s open. I don’t see any marks—to be sure—or signs of a fight, but I thought perhaps you might have been so angry——”
He nearly shut up the expressive eye altogether, he looked at John so hard. And he gave his eye, and his face, and his whole body, a sharp twist, as if he would have screwed the truth out of John.
“Make yourself easy,” said the carrier. “He went into that room last night without harm in word or act from me, and no one has entered it since. He has gone away of his own free will.”
“Oh! Well, I think he has got off pretty easy,” said Tackleton, taking a chair.
The sneer was lost upon the carrier, who sat down, too, and shaded his face in his hand for some time before speaking.
“You showed me last night,” he said at length, “my wife, my dear wife that I love, deceiving me, and meeting a strange man who had deceived me. I think there’s no man in the world I wouldn’t rather have had show it to me.”
“I confess I know that I am not a favorite in your home, John, because I never believed wholly in your pretty little wife,” said Tackleton.
“And as you did show me, and as you saw her to such disadvantage, it is right you should know what my mind is on the subject. For it’s settled, and nothing can change it.”