"Why couldn't he have got the bird at eight or nine o'clock at night?" debated Ben Little, quite an old oracle in the village and the father of young Ben. "That's the best hour for them sea-birds: nobody in their senses would wait till a'most the dawn."
"And look here," cried out Mrs. Bent shrilly: but she was obliged to be shrill to get a general hearing. "Why did he have a pistol with him? Tom Dance keeps a gun: he takes it out in his boat sometimes; but he keeps no pistol."
"Young Walter said in the night, to me and the doctor, that it was his father's pistol when we asked him about it," interposed John Bent.
"Rubbish!" returned the landlady. "I know better. Tom Dance never owned a pistol yet: how should he, and me not see it There's not a man in the whole place that keeps a pistol."
"Except Mr. Superintendent Nettleby," put in old Ben.
"Nobody was bringing him in," retorted the landlady, "it's his business to keep a pistol. My husband, as you all know, thought it was a pistol he heard go off the night that young Mr. Castlemaine was missed, though the Commodore stood to it that it was his gun--and, as we said then, if it was a pistol, where did the pistol come from? Pistols here, pistols there: I should like to ask what we are all coming to! We sha'n't be able to step out of our door after dark next, if pistols jump into fashion."
"At any rate, it seems it was a pistol last night, wherever he might have got it from," said Ben Little. "And downright careless it must have been of him to let it go off in the way he says it did--just for knocking his elbow again' the wall. Its to be known yet whether that there's not a lame tale; invented to excuse hisself."
Several faces were turned on old Ben Little at this. His drift was scarcely understood.
"Excuse himself from what?" demanded Mrs. Bent sharply. "Do you suppose the young fellow would shoot himself purposely, Ben Little?"
"What I think," said Ben, with calmness, "if one could come to the bottom of it, is this: that there young fellow got a fright last night--see the Grey Friar most probable; and his hand shook so that the pistol went off of itself."