"Old Mother Green says he talked about 'bills,'" said Richard. "That was before you saw him."
"Does she?" carelessly remarked the doctor. "I heard nothing of the kind. There was no coherence whatever in his words, so far as I noticed: one never pays much attention to the babblings of a drunken man."
"Was he quite beside himself?--quite unconscious of what he said, Rane?"
"Well, I am told that it is the peculiar idiosyncrasy of Wilks to be able to talk and yet to be unconscious for all practical purposes, and for recollection afterwards. Otherwise I should not have considered him quite so far gone as that. He talked certainly; a little; seemed to answer me in a mechanical sort of way when I asked him a question, slipping one word into another. If I had tried to understand him, I don't suppose I could have done so. He did not say much; and I was away from him a good deal about the house, looking for water and rags to put on his head."
"Then you heard nothing about it, Rane?"
"Absolutely nothing."
The doctor sat so that the green shade of the candle happened to fall on his face, making it look very pale. Richard North, absorbed in thought about Wilks, could not have told whether the face was in shadow or in light. He spoke next about the stranger who had joined Wilks, saying he wished he could find out who it was.
"A tall thin man, bearing the appearance of a gentleman?" returned Dr. Rane. "Then I think I saw him, and spoke to him."
"Where?" asked Richard with animation.
"Close to your works. He was looking in through the iron gates. After quitting Green's cottage, I crossed the waste ground, and saw him standing at the gates, under the middle gas-lamp. I had to visit a patient down by the church, and took the nearer way."