"He said he always knowed it," added Montgomery, misled by the smile.
"Well, what else?" questioned Gilmore.
"Why, I reckon that was about all!" said Joe, who had ventured as far afield into the realms of fancy as his drunken faculties would allow.
"You're sure about that?"
"I hope I may die—"
"And the judge says you're to go home?"
"Say, Shrimp took my old woman there, and she cried and bellered and carried on awful! She loves me, boss—the judge says I'm to go home to her to-night or he'll have me pinched. He says that you and Marsh ain't to keep me here no longer!"
His voice rose into a wail, for blind terror was laying hold of him. There was something, a look on Gilmore's handsome cruel face, he did not understand but which filled him with miserable foreboding.
"What's that, about Marsh and me keeping you here?" inquired Gilmore.
"You got to leave me loose—"