The boy, bobbing his head, explained to Durgan that he had been sent to fetch the borrowed horse.
When he had gone on, Durgan said, "'Dolphus may die before anything happens; that would be the simplest solution, perhaps." He remembered how yesterday it had seemed all-important to extract all the knowledge this man had before life went from him.
"Ah; you spoke to the doctor, I hear. It is always right, in any case, to preserve life as long as possible."
Durgan looked toward his mine. The triteness to which the dialog had descended was the more irksome because he suspected that Alden read beneath his own sudden dullness and inertia.
"When the boy brings along the horse you can ride it as far as my cousins'. He will find you a buggy, and will give you a letter which will open things at Hilyard without giving much publicity to your name and position. But you, of course, can best judge whether it's worth while to go."
"Miss Claxton has seemed averse to my going," said Alden; and because Durgan made no answer to this, he sat down on a rock, with brows knit, and determined to go.
Some twenty minutes later Durgan was called again into the road. The lout of a boy refused to give Alden the horse. He said very little; he even blubbered; but he hung on to the bridle and tried to pass.
It was soon discovered that he had been commissioned by Miss Claxton to take a telegram to Hilyard, for which service he had been promised excessive pay.
Wrath rose in Durgan. "Fool that I was to warn her," he thought. "She has wired to the man she shields to be on his guard." At that moment his wife's welfare was not in his thought, and he felt he would rather have suffered the last penalty of crime himself than allow this coil of secrets to exist longer. He inwardly cursed all women, and was very sorry for Alden.