"When Jim was kidnapped you felt sure that that pointed to him as what you call the 'right one.' Is it possible that has become known to those interested, and this has been done to point you back to Jack?"
"You mean that old witch downstairs. . . . She is capable of anything, of course, and you don't need to look at her twice to see the gipsy blood in her. . . . On the other hand, she may have been cunning enough to anticipate the view you have just expressed. She may have had this boy Jack carried off for the sole purpose of prejudicing the other in our eyes. Do you follow me?"
"You mean as I put it just now--that one would expect them to kidnap our man to leave theirs in possession."
"Go a step farther, Mr. Eager. Suppose they have in some way learned that, in consequence of Jim's carrying-off, I am inclined to think him the rightful heir. They may, as you say, have carried off the other simply to point me away from Jim and so confuse the issue. But it is just possible they are not so simple as all that, and have reasoned thus--'When Jim disappeared Sir Denzil considered that as proof that he was the rightful heir. If we now carry off Jack, that is just what Sir Denzil would expect us to do, and he will probably stick the tighter to Jim in consequence.' If that is their reasoning, then Jack is our man and not Jim. You follow me?"
"It's a terrible tangle," said Eager wearily, with his head in his hands. "It seems to me you can argue any way from anything that happens, and only make matters worse."
"Exactly!" said Sir Denzil, over a pinch of snuff.
"And so we come back to my point. You must treat both exactly alike and leave the issue to Providence."
"It looks like it," said Sir Denzil, and forbore to argue the matter theologically. "If the other comes back we shall have two strings to our bow, which is one too many for practical purposes. If he doesn't, we'll stick to the one we have, right man or wrong, and be hanged to them!"
Seth Rimmer, and young Seth, who had only lately returned home after an unusually long absence, were tireless in their search for the missing boy in their own neighbourhood, in or about the Mere.
After a day's hard work dragging the great hooks to and fro across the bottom of the Mere, old Seth would shake his head gravely as he looked back over the silent black water.