Another link was added to my chain of evidence, another thread to the web I was weaving.
Without that packet I had cherished a suspicion. With it, I grasped a certainty.
CHAPTER XXX.
A CHAPTER OF TELEGRAMS.
The following week was to me one of busy idleness. Now at the cottage, where Bethel, pain-racked and delirious, buffeted between life and death. Now closeted for a half-hour with the new night operator. Keeping an eye upon Dimber Joe, who continued his lounging and novel reading, and who was, to all appearances, the idlest and most care-free man in Trafton.
I saw less of Jim Long than pleased me, for, when he was not bound to the chariot wheel of "our old woman," he contrived somehow to elude me, or to avoid all téte-â-tétes. I scarcely saw him except in the presence of a third party.
Mr. Warren, or one or two other members of the party who had met me at Jim Long's cabin, were constantly to be seen about Trafton. During the day they were carelessly conspicuous; during the night their carelessness gave place to caution; but they were none the less present, as would have been proven by an emergency.
The new telegraph operator was a host in himself. He was social, talkative, and something of a lounger. He found it easy to touch the pulse of Trafton gossip, and knew what they thought at Porter's concerning Bethel's calamity, Long's arrest and subsequent release under bail, etc., without seeming to have made an effort in search of information.