"Well, I don't care what they testified to, that's what I asked 'em just the same."
"It seems to me that according to you all the witnesses are liars and you are the only truthful one in the bunch.... Isn't that it? But, when you reached Three Mile Bay, did you stop to eat? You must have been hungry, weren't you?"
"No, I wasn't hungry," replied Clyde, simply.
"You wanted to get away from that place as quickly as possible, wasn't that it? You were afraid that those three men might go up to Big Bittern and having heard about Miss Alden tell about having seen you—wasn't that it?"
"No, that wasn't it. But I didn't want to stay around there. I've said why."
"I see. But after you got down to Sharon where you felt a little more safe—a little further away, you didn't lose any time in eating, did you? It tasted pretty good all right down there, didn't it?"
"Oh, I don't know about that. I had a cup of coffee and a sandwich."
"And a piece of pie, too, as we've already proved here," added Mason. "And after that you joined the crowd coming up from the depot as though you had just come up from Albany, as you afterwards told everybody. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes, that was it."
"Well, now for a really innocent man who only so recently experienced a kindly change of heart, don't you think you were taking an awful lot of precaution? Hiding away like that and waiting in the dark and pretending that you had just come up from Albany."