"You did not speak to each other at the breakfast table?"
"No."
Radnor's face was set in strained lines; it was evident that this was a very painful subject.
"Did you have any conversation later?"
"Only a few words."
"Please repeat what was said."
Radnor appeared to hesitate and then replied a trifle wearily that he did not remember the exact words; that it was merely a recapitulation of what had been said the night before. Upon being urged to give the gist of the conversation he replied that his father had wished to make up their quarrel, but on the old basis, and he had refused. The Colonel had repeated that he was still too young a man to give over his affairs into the hands of another,—that he had a good many years before him in which he intended to be his own master. Radnor had replied that he was too old a man to be treated any longer as a boy, and that he would go away and work where he would be paid for what he did.
"And may I ask," the coroner inquired placidly, "whether you had any particular work in mind when you made that statement, or was it merely a figure of rhetoric calculated to bring Colonel Gaylord to terms?"
Rad scowled and said nothing, and the rest of his answers were terseness itself.
"Did you and your father have any further conversation on the ride over, or in the course of the day?"