The doctor poured some liquid into a cup and held it to his lips.
“Try to swallow,” he said, “it will help you.”
The innkeeper made an effort and swallowed a little.
“Come near,” he whispered, and the Vicar leaned down. “I killed Vaughan,” he said, “not Rhys Walters.”
Mr. Lewis was so much astonished that he did not know what to say, and merely looked into the man’s face to see whether or not he was in full possession of his senses.
“Then that is what has been troubling you?” he said at last.
Hosea made a sign of assent. “Me it was,” he continued feebly, “me, an’ not him. We both struck at him together, an’ my stick came down on his head and laid him his length. His no more than shaved his shoulder.”
“Are you certain that what you say is true?” asked the Vicar, who was suspecting the dying man of an hallucination, but who began to see sense in the circumstantiality of his words. “If you killed him, why did Walters fly so suddenly without another blow?”
“He was blinded. A stone took him in the face as he let out, an’ he never knew ’twarn’t himself as did for him. So he went off smart-like——”
The effort to speak plainly was almost too much for Evans. He lay looking at the Vicar with eyes that seemed to be focussed on something very far beyond the room.