“They did vanish,” said my father.
“Now you utter fool talk!” cried Dillworth.
“I speak the living truth,” replied my father. “Your brother David and your horse disappeared out of sound and hearing—disappeared out of the sight and knowledge of men—after he rode away from your door on that fatal night.”
“Well,” said the hunchback, “since my brother David rode away from my door—and you know that—I am free of obligation for him.”
“It is Cain's speech!” replied my father.
The hunchback put back his long hair with a swift brush of the fingers across his forehead.
“Dillworth,” cried my father, and his voice filled the empty places of the room, “is the mark there?”
The hunchback began to curse. He walked around my father and the girl, the hair about his lank jaws, his fingers working, his face evil. In his front and menace he was like a weasel that would attack some larger creature. And while he made the great turn of his circle my father, with his arm about the girl, stepped before the drawer of the table where the pistol lay.
“Dillworth,” he said calmly, “I know where he is. And the mark you felt for just now ought to be there.”
“Fool!” cried the hunchback. “If I killed him how could he ride away from the door?”