George Prattleton wound his arm round one of the cloister pillars: face, heart, senses, alike scared. To give him his due, he would no more have countenanced a thing like this than he would have committed murder. All denial to Henry was over; and he felt half dead as he glanced forward to future consequences, and their effect upon his own reputation.
"You saw all this! Why on earth did you not pounce in upon him? or help me when I got back with the matches?"
"Because I was bewildered—frightened, if you will; and it all passed so quickly. I knew afterwards that it was what I ought to have done; but one can't do always the right thing at the right time."
"He put the leaf in his pocket, you say? It may not be destroyed. I——"
"Do you know what it related to?" interrupted Henry.
"Yes; to some old tithe cause—a dispute in a family he knows; people of the name of Whiffam," answered George Prattleton. "Some trifling cause, he said."
"Well, it's an awfully dangerous thing to do, let it relate to ever so trifling a cause," observed Henry. "Who is this Rolls? Do you know him well?"
"Three days back I did not know him from Adam," was the candid admission. "We met at the billiard rooms; and, somehow, we got thick directly. That night, when you saw us in the grounds, he was sounding me on this very thing—whether I could not get him a sight of the register."
"What's to be done about it?" asked Henry.
"I don't know," returned George Prattleton, flinging up his hands.