"Well?"
"The doctor commonly wears a gray cloak, something like a military cape. Nobody ever saw any one else wear another just like it. Everybody knows him at sight by his gray cloak."
"But he wasn't wearing it."
"That's the point. It looks as though he had thrown it down on the ground so as to conceal it. Selby swears it was a gray cape or cloak, not a coat, because he saw a corner fall down over the man's arm as he hurried away."
"What sort of a man is Selby?"
"Why,--his word is considered good. He's a builder and contractor. Worked himself up from a common workman, and is very successful. He's built some of our best houses. Ben Bussey, the young man I told you about who lives at the doctor's, does woodcarving for him."
"I thought you said he was a cripple."
"Oh, his hands are all right."
"Do the people consider that Selby is justified in his charges?"
"Well, they don't know just what to think. I guess most of them would rather like to have Selby prove something against the doctor, for the sake of justifying all the talk that has gone before. But I think it's mostly Henry that makes the family unpopular."