"She's right, Doc; right's your left leg," sounded a throaty voice, which startled the two of them into remembering that they were not alone.
"Why, Wyatt!" exclaimed the minister reprovingly, turning sharply on the deputy.
"Excuse me, Doc," Wyatt mumbled abjectly. "I just thought that out loud. All the same, she's wisin' you up to somethin' if you'll let 'er. Some of these old dames that ain't got nothin' to do but just set and think gets hep to a lot of things that a hustlin' man overlooks."
Hampstead was disgusted.
"Don't interrupt us again, please, Wyatt," he observed, combining dignity and rebuke in his utterance.
But Wyatt, influenced no doubt by the look almost of fright on Mrs. Burbeck's face, was already in apologetic mood.
"Say," he mumbled contritely, "you're right, Doc. I'm so sorry for the break that, orders or no orders, I'll just step out in the hall while you finish. But all the same, you listen to her," and he indicated the disturbed and slightly offended Mrs. Burbeck with a stab of a toothpick in the air, "and she'll tell you somethin' that's useful."
"Thank you very much, Wyatt," replied the minister in noncommittal tones, but with a sigh of relief as the deputy withdrew from the room.
Yet he had a growing sense of depression. Wyatt's boorish, croaking interruption had thrown him out of poise. Mrs. Burbeck's exaggerated sense of the gravity of the matter weighed him down like lead, and the more because an inner voice, sounding faintly and from far away, but with significance unmistakable, seemed to tell him her view was right. Nevertheless, his whole soul rose in protest. It ought not to be right. It was a gross travesty on justice and on popular good sense.
Mrs. Burbeck, looking at him fixedly, noted this change in spirit and the conflict of emotions which resulted. Reaching out impulsively, she touched the large hand of the man where it lay upon the desk.