“That is our prisoner you hear in there.”
“Your prisoner. . . ?”
“Yes. Do you understand? It is how you say it?—our prisoner. When they left the town—the last time—one, he remained.”
“Why?”
“He would not go,” said the priest gravely.
After some time, Berry passed his hand over his eyes. “O yes!” he agreed wearily, “I understand—just about as much as I understand what’d keep an ’Un ’ere on his own, and what’d keep you three, who are none of you as young as you was, ’ere to look after ’im; and what brought me into it at all. . . And you take it in turns to guard ’im, you and Mister Rogiet and the little old lady?”
He rubbed his eyes again with his knuckles.
“We do not guard him.”
“Not guard ’im . . . ?”
It seemed to Berry there was a certain chill, a certain stillness abroad. That the priest’s voice came from a distance when he said “There is no need. All the treasures of the whole earth, they would not call him from that poor room. . .” And he led Berry to the door, and opened it.