"Ah—then!"
"And he's gone up at once, as soon as he heard that Tom was found, to tell them all about it."
"Aw!"—decidedly crestfallen at the wind being taken out of his sails in this fashion. "I—I thought—maybe I could help him—"
"Oh you did, did you?"—plucking up heart at sight of his discomfiture. "And how were you going to help him?"
"If he's gone to make a clean breast of it it's all up, of course. If he'd kept it to himself—"
"He might have run away, you mean?"
"Safest for him, maybe. Up above Coupée there's a stone with blood on it. And I picked up this beside it," and he hauled out the button and the bit of blue cloth he had found. "I thought, maybe if he knew about these he might think it safest to go."
"Then every one would have the right to say he'd done it, and he didn't. He knew no more about it than you did."
"I didn't know anything about it."
"Well, neither did he, and he's not the kind to run away."