Durgan went over the notes, which Alden had described accurately.
"The negro is really dying, I suppose?" he asked. "He can help us no further?"
"Yes; he may be dead by this time; but, curiously enough, to the end of my interview he was chuckling, and saying that he would pay the villain and right the lady yet. But he would not give me, or the doctor, any indication of what he meant. He adjured me to——"
"Listen." Durgan went to the window as he spoke, and the dogs pricked their ears.
"I hear nothing," said Alden.
"I ought to be going home," said Durgan. "What were you saying?"
"Only that the fellow told me to keep my wits about me, and tell you to do the same. There is something to be subtracted from all the evidence he gave, for he was certainly, if rational at all, in a very fantastic humor."
The lawyer's tones were low and weary. Durgan was not even listening. He had opened the window a little.
"I think there is a horse, or horses, on the road from the Cove," he said. His thought glanced back to the last time he heard horsemen approach in the night, to arrest Adam. No errand of less baneful import seemed to fit the circumstances now.
The French clock on the mantel-shelf rang out twelve musical strokes.