He made no reply, though she paused for one. After a moment she proceeded, but in an altered tone.
“But you spoke of to-night. What did you mean?”
“I said that the conditions are not unlike. Your brother is here, in secret; and you have followed him—also in secret.”
“And the rest——?” eagerly.
He shrugged his shoulders, and his gigantic shadow mimicked him much as Hickey’s had done a little while before.
“As to that,” said he, “I would not venture to prophesy.”
“I do not require you to do that,” she said. “I merely ask you to tell what you know.” She came a step nearer to him and her head bent forward, as she continued: “That night at the ‘Wheat Sheaf’ a party of colonial soldiers showed themselves. Will it be the same to-night?”
He hesitated; like lightning she seized upon this as an answer.
“It will,” she cried. “You have seen to that. Such as you are always to be depended upon to arrange their traps cleverly.”
Her eyes now fairly burned with scorn; her gesture, as she shrank back from him, was one of repulsion. And it was this gesture that goaded him beyond endurance.