"I don't think about it at all," I answered. "I'm waiting for you to tell me—if you feel you want to."
"I didn't do it—I never touched him. I should never have had the strength or the courage," he began, in a shaking whisper.
"But you were shamming sleep," I reminded him.
"Of course I was," was his surprising answer. "What else could I do? I didn't know who you were, or who was coming into the place, and I'd seen enough in the way of horrors for one night to last me all my life." He shuddered, and covered his face with his hands, and dropped down on to his bed.
"Seen enough horrors!" I echoed. "What had you seen?"
He looked up at me, and began his extraordinary story. "I went to bed a long time before old Blowfield," he said. "I think I went to sleep almost at once; I generally do, you know. At all events I didn't hear the old man come up to his room. When I first woke up I heard a noise down below in the house, just like somebody wrenching open a shutter. I got horribly frightened, and I put my head under the bedclothes, and kept very still; it was just like that night when you broke in and came to my room. After a time the noise stopped, and I began to wonder whether someone had tried to get in and couldn't, or whether they had really got into the house. It must have been about a quarter of an hour after that—only it seemed ever so much longer—that I first heard old Blowfield cry out."
I felt certain now that he was speaking the truth. Watching him narrowly, I saw the terror grow in his eyes at the recollection of what he had heard and seen in that grim old house. I nodded to him to go on.
"I heard old Blowfield shout out, 'Who's there?'" went on the youth. "He shouted that twice, and I got so excited that I crept out of my room in the dark, and leaned over the rail at the top of the staircase. I saw old Blowfield standing there, and just below him was a man, and the man was crouching as if he was going to spring. Old Blowfield struck at him with the stick—he was holding a candle in his left hand, so that he could see what he was doing—and the man dodged, and caught the stick, and pulled it out of his hand. The man struck old Blowfield once, and he went down and lay still; and then he struck him again."
"Why didn't you raise an alarm?" I asked, somewhat needlessly.
"What good would that have been?" murmured Andrew Ferkoe resentfully. "I could see that the man didn't think there was anyone else in the house. What chance should I have had if he'd caught sight of me? I don't know whether I made any noise, but while he stood there with the stick in his hands he looked up towards where I was, but he didn't see me. Then he went back into the bedroom and came out, dragging the bedclothes; he threw them on top of the old man. When he went down into the house I slipped back into my room and got into bed; I simply dared not move or make a sound."