"Why, what you did about that money that Captain Hunniwell lost. What made you do it, Jed?"
Jed's eyes closed momentarily. Then he opened them and, without looking at his visitor, rose slowly to his feet.
"So Sam told you," he said, with a sigh. "I—I didn't hardly think he'd do that. . . . Course 'twas all right for him to tell," he added hastily. "I didn't ask him not to, but—but, he and I havin' been—er—chums, as you might say, for so long, I—I sort of thought. . . . Well, it don't make any difference, I guess. Did he tell your—your sister? Did he tell her how I—how I stole the money?"
Charles shook his head.
"No," he said quietly. "No, he didn't tell either of us that. He told us that you had tried to make him believe you took the money, but that he knew you were not telling the truth. He knew you didn't take it."
"Eh? Now . . . now, Charlie, that ain't so." Jed was even more disturbed and distressed than before. "I—I told Sam I took it and—and kept it. I TOLD him I did. What more does he want? What's he goin' around tellin' folks I didn't for? What—"
"Hush, Jed! He knows you didn't take it. He knew it all the time you were telling him you did. In fact he came into your shop this afternoon to tell you that the Sage man over at Wapatomac had found the four hundred dollars on the table in his sitting-room just where the captain left it. Sage had just 'phoned him that very thing. He would have told you that, but you didn't give him the chance. Jed, I—"
But Jed interrupted. His expression as he listened had been changing like the sky on a windy day in April.
"Here, here!" he cried wildly. "What—what kind of talk's that? Do—do you mean to tell me that Sam Hunniwell never lost that money at all? That all he did was leave it over at Wapatomac?"
"Yes, that's just what I mean."