Ben said nothing.
The question was not repeated, but another trembled on the speaker's lips. At last it found words.
"When you had me down I—I thought you had done for me. Why did you—let me up?"
A pause followed. Then Ben's blue eyes raised and met the other's.
"You'd really like to know?"
"Yes."
Another moment of hesitation, but the youth's eyes did not move. "Very well, I'll tell you." More to himself than to the other he was speaking. His voice softened unconsciously. "A girl saved you that time, Tom Blair, a girl you never saw. You haven't any idea what it means, but I love that girl, and I could never look her in the face again with blood on my hands, even such blood as yours. That's the reason."
For a moment Tom Blair was silent; then into his brain there flashed a suggestion, and he grasped at it as a drowning man at a straw.
"Wouldn't it be blood on your hands just the same if you take me back where we're headed, back to Mick Kennedy and—"
With a single motion, swift as though raised by a spring, Ben was upon his feet.