"My bag? The carpet-bag? What has that to do with you, with us? What are you talking of? What trap? I know nothing of any trap."
"Do you know nothing of a man caught there in the middle of the bridge where the footway has fallen out—do you know nothing of that man struggling to lift himself up from that cursed hole and crying for help? You know nothing, do you?"
Ringfield's surprise was genuine, as Crabbe was beginning to see.
"Certainly I know nothing, have heard nothing. I have been in the church some time, an hour I should think. A hole——"
Then he remembered.
"The dog!" he cried. "The little dead dog! Now I understand. He must have fallen through. I wondered at the time how he got out there under the bridge on top of those rolling logs that carried him over the fall. Once there, it was impossible to save him. I remember his eyes."
"What are you talking about now?" said the other angrily. "I'll swear you knew something of that hole and meant to see me go down through it."
Ringfield smiled with that slow, wry smile of his.
"I knew nothing of the hole. But I am not so sure that I would be sorry if I saw you go down through it this moment, so long as it was not my direct work. You and I can never be friends. You and I cannot expect tolerance of each other. We are enemies, we must always be enemies, to the death—to the death!"
Crabbe had, as usual, the upper hand in ease and coolness, and being now quite restored in physical courage he began to note the signs of illness and misery in the other's face. He was almost sorry for him and said so.