"What a pity it is," she said, "that you did not think to ask him his name! Was there nothing about him that you can remember that might help to his identification—no personal peculiarity of look, or dress, or manner of speech?"
He shook his head regretfully, saying, "I was not much in the humor to notice peculiarities just then. But yes, come to think about it, there was one little incident that rather amused me at the time, badly as I felt; but I have not thought of it since until now. The little gentleman had a very slow, cautious, and precise way of speaking. I asked him what time it was, when we were down at the beach. He pulled out his watch and replied very deliberately: 'Without desiring to be understood as committing myself to an affirmation of the absolute accuracy of my time-piece, I may say that, to the best of my information and belief, it is now eleven minutes past ten o'clock.'"
"Ah, I have seen him! I recognize his phrase, 'information and belief'!" exclaimed Mary, "and know just how he said it. Ruth and I met him the first time he came into the neighborhood, looking for the Van Deusts, 'supposed to be brothers' as he then said. Ruth imitates him, sometimes, and does it very well. When we come to match together our remembrances of him, I am sure we will be able to give Lem some information that will help him to find the man."
"I certainly hope you may," answered Dorn, "for I can do nothing more. I have got to resign myself to play the passive part of a football for other people to bounce about, without being able to help myself, whether I am going into the goal or the ditch. I have a lawyer, but he seems to look rather blue over the prospect."
"Then get another."
"And have two of them looking blue? No, no. That would be more than I could stand. One is enough. Sailors don't take very kindly to lawyers, any way, you know."
At the end of an hour—a very short time as it seemed to them, but the limit set by the jailor, who now appeared, looking in at the corridor door from time to time, with an air of expectation—Mary said she would have to be going.
"How did you come over?" asked Dorn.
"Uncle Thatcher brought me."
"The—mischief he did! And did he know you were coming to see me?"