“I can make no conjectures, as I do not know facts enough. Cecilia, who seems to have her own theory, which she will not impart, will endeavour to learn more from Sally.
“Meantime, do you watch Belden! I know that he went several times to see Sally, and each time she was more ill. He is capable of anything, the rotten villain!—as two of my family know, Cecilia and myself. Is he disposed to be friendly with you now? Something may appear in conversation, if you have a clew. Watch him!
“Yours,
“Thomas Tootler.”
Mr. Waddy read this letter very carefully twice. He folded and filed it with a bundle of old yellow letters, written in a hand like his own, with so much difference only as there may be between writing of man and boy-man. He then, with the same extreme deliberation, took from a portmanteau a mahogany box. In it were two eight-inch six-shooters, apparently fired only once or twice for trial. Both were loaded in every barrel of the cylinder with conical ball. The caps were perfectly fresh, but Mr. Waddy changed them all.
While he was thus engaged, Major Granby came in.
“At your armory, eh?” he asked. “You were always a great amateur in shooting-irons. What’s in the wind now? You look like an executioner. What do you intend to slay—beast, man, or devil?”
“If I shoot, it will be to slay all three in one,” said Waddy gravely.
He had a manner of intense and concentrated wrath, quite terrible to see. The Ira of the man’s nature was dominant.
Granby understood that this meant mischief.