"I have not started work," the painter said. "I've—I've been looking at that grave by the church wall—the boy's grave."
"Oh!" said Uniacke, with sudden coldness.
"Do you know, Uniacke, it seems—it seems to me that the gravestone has been defaced."
"Defaced! Why, what could make such an idea come to you?" exclaimed the clergyman. "Defaced! But—"
"There is a gap in the inscription after the word 'Jack,'" the painter said slowly, fixing a piercing and morose glance on his companion. "And it seems to me that some blunt instrument has been at work there."
"Oh, there was always a gap there," said Uniacke hastily, touching the letter that lay in his pocket, and feeling, strangely, as if the contact fortified that staggering pilgrim on the path of lies—his conscience. "There was always a gap. It was a whim of the Skipper's—a mad whim."
"But I understood he was sane when his shipmate was buried? You said so."
"Sane? Yes, in comparison with what he is now. But one could not argue with him. He was distraught with grief."
Sir Graham looked at Uniacke with the heavy suspicion of a sick man, but he said nothing more on the subject. He turned as if to go out. Uniacke stopped him.
"You are going to paint?"