The stranger was repeating what he had said to Emily.
Paul ran the words over under his breath. They sounded familiar. They had a rhythm that touched some cell of memory. Suddenly his mind groped upon discovery. Emily uttered an exclamation in the same instant. Both of them knew what the stranger was attempting to say.
"Don't you remember Hood's 'The Dream of Eugene Aram,' Paul?"
"Yes," he said with a nod. "'And Eugene Aram walked between, with gyves upon his wrists.'"
The line, as he repeated it, had a startling weirdness.
"What can the poor brain be thinking? What is hidden back of this strange thought?" Emily asked in a whisper.
"It may be as we have thought—that he belongs to the Daphne's crew. Perhaps in its disorder his brain is reflecting the crime committed aboard here in the words of Hood's poem. Yet one would imagine that if there is anything in the theory of crime suggesting crime that it would be something of the sea of which he would be thinking. Eugene Aram was a schoolmaster and he killed in the woods. This man is a sailor. There is no doubt about that."
"Could he have been the one——"
Emily shrank from the stranger at the thought which leaped into her mind.
"Don't think that, Emily. If he had a hand in what happened here——But let as not think of what's past."