A fine description of sorrow would not have been so eloquent, but exactly what he sorrowed for Alec did not know. It could hardly be for the death merely.
Alec paced again. He had made himself an uneven track in the ragged grass. Had the lineaments of the dead been more clearly seen, death would have had a stronger influence; but even as it was, death, darkness, and solitude had a language of their own, in which the hearts of the two men shared more or less.
At length the American spoke, arresting Alec's walk.
"See here," he said, "if what they say is true—and as far as I know it is—he's got up from being dead once already."
The emphasis on the word "once" conveyed the suggestion which had evidently just occurred to him.
"Oh, I know all about that story." Alec spoke with the scorn of superior information, casting off the disagreeable suggestion. "I was there myself."
"You were, were you? Well, so was I, and I tell you I know no more than babe unborn whether this old gentleman's Cameron or not."
Alec's mind was singularly free from any turn for speculative thought. He intended to bring Bates to see the dead in the morning, and that would decide the matter. He saw no sense in debating a question of fact.
"I was one of the fellows in that survey," explained Harkness, "and if you're the fellow we saw at the station, as I reckon you are, then I don't know any more about this old gentleman I've been housing than you do."
Trenholme had an impulse to command silence, but, resisting it, only kept silence himself and resumed his tread over the uneven ground.