“As though you knew! Suppose I strike you blind—now—with a flash of Him?”
“I don't take your meaning, sir”, said Bates, with a strange heart-bound and sense of awe.
“Do you remember 33 of the quarry-gang, Fred?”
“Yes”.
Hogarth whispered: “It was I who got him off”.
Bates whitened to the lips. “I—I thought as much”.
“There is yet another chance, which you, if you like, may take”.
Bates saw heaven opening; but with this vague hope was left two days.
On the third, Hogarth explained what he assumed to be the new plan of Loveday.
“I take it”, he said, “that he will pass over the moor in a balloon trailing a rope, which will have a loop to be slipped under the arms. I tell you, there are dangers in this scheme: you may be shot. Are you for trying it?”