"Damn," said Gardiner.
"He won't make any use of it," said Denis. "That's not a bad little chap, Harry."
"Not a bad little chap? He's a most confoundedly inquisitive little chap! He won't rest till he's ferreted out the whole thing. Oh, damn! I wouldn't have had this happen for anything. Why the devil couldn't I keep my countenance? I thought I might have trusted myself for that!"
He paced up and down in a fury.
"You've had a tryin' time."
"Trying? I've had a scarifying time! That inquest, when the foreman began pumping you—I'd have murdered you as well, Denis, if you hadn't been adroit. But if I'm going to lose my nerve over such trifles as this—what an ass! oh, what an ass!"
He threw himself back on the lounge. Denis could not help feeling that he took it rather weakly. He did not allow for the rift in his friend's armor, that demoralizing fear of confinement. In these last few days their positions seemed to have been reversed.
"Scott can't do anything," he said rather coolly. "It's no use his suspectin' if there's no one he can pump, and there isn't. I'm not going to give it away, and you aren't either, when you're yourself again. As to Mrs. Trent, she can't prove anything from the chisel—you might have left it there from openin' the case. Besides, Scott wouldn't discuss it with her. He's above that."
"I dare say you're right, but I wish I hadn't been such an ass, and I wish he weren't the doctor at Westby," said Gardiner, with a huge yawn, "it brings it so unpleasantly near. Oh, Lord! I am tired. Do you mind clearing out now? I expect I shall sleep like a log. Please the pigs, in another couple of weeks' time I'll be out of this over-civilized, over-populated country!"