St. George was evidently at a loss yet, and stood in silence. All in a moment, his face lighted up.
“Surely,” he cried impulsively, “you did not take that man in the gig for William Brook!”
“It was William Brook. Who else was it?”
“A stranger. A stranger to me and to the neighbourhood. A man to whom I gave a lift.”
Tod’s face presented a picture. Believing, as he did still, that it was Brook in the gig, the idea suggested by me—that St. George was concealing Brook at his house out of good-fellowship—grew stronger and stronger. But he considered that, as it had come to this, St. George ought to say so.
“Where’s the use of your continuing to deny it, St. George?” he asked. “You had Brook there, and you know you had.”
“But I tell you that it was not Brook,” returned St. George. “Should I deny it, if it had been he? You talk like a child.”
“Has Brook been away so long that we shouldn’t know him, do you suppose?” retorted quick-tempered Tod. “Why! as a proof that it was Brook, he shouted back his greeting to us, taking off his hat to wave it in answer to ours. Would a strange man have done that?”
“The man did nothing of the kind,” said St. George.
“Yes, he did,” I said, thinking it was time I spoke. “He called back a greeting to us, and he waved his hat round and round. I should not have felt so sure it was Brook but for seeing him without his hat.”