"Quite sure," I answered shuddering, yet with less violence. "How could I be mistaken? If you had seen him----"
"And you are sure--did you feel his heart this morning? Whether it was beating?"
"His heart?" Something in his voice gave me courage to look up, though I still shunned the water, lest that dreadful visage should rise from the depths. "No, I did not touch him."
"And you tell me that he fell on his face. Did you turn him over?"
"No." I saw his drift now. I was sitting erect. My brain began to work again. "No," I admitted; "I did not."
"Then how----" asked the Dutchman roughly--"how do you know that he was dead, young sir? Tell me that."
When I explained, "Bah!" he cried. "There is nothing in that! You jumped to a conclusion. I thought a Spaniard's head was harder to break. As for the blood coming from his mouth, perhaps he bit his tongue, or did any one of a hundred things--except die, Master Francis. That you may be sure is just what he did not do."
"You think so?" I said gratefully. I began to look about me, yet still with a tremor in my limbs, and an inclination to start at shadows.
"Think?" he rejoined, with a heartiness which brought conviction home tome; "I am sure of it. You may depend upon it that Master Clarence, or the man you take for Master Clarence--who no doubt was the other soldier seen with the scoundrel this morning--found him hurt late in the evening. Then, seeing him in that state, he put him in the porch for shelter, either because he could not get him to Arnheim at once, or because he did not wish to give the alarm before he had made his arrangements for netting your party."
"That is possible!" I allowed, with a sigh of relief. "But what of Master Clarence?"