“Very likely,” said Bar, “and I s’pose a fellow’s own counsel is bound to side with him? Have you time now, or shall I call again?”
“Call again?” shouted the judge. “Do you want me to burst? Out with it, now? How did you come by that wallet?”
Barnaby’s mind had been at work all night on what he meant to say that morning, and it never occurred to him as strange that those two elderly men should get so excited with curiosity as they now clearly were. He had struggled so long with the important question “what should he do with himself,” that he felt he must ask somebody, and surely two such men as these ought to be able to tell him. His next words were, therefore:
“Well, then, if you’ll keep my secret for me, I’ll begin at the beginning—it isn’t long.”
Not long. Only the outline story of such a life as he remembered, with Major Montague and old Prosper, in every part of the country, and in all sorts of curious and often doubtful undertakings.
Then his own growing conviction that he had been born for something better, his final rebellion and his setting out for himself.
“But that black valise!” exclaimed the judge. “What did you find in that? You say you remember some sort of home and family when you were very young. Did you find anything about it?”
“I haven’t opened it yet,” said Bar. “You know, I said to you, I promised Major Montague I wouldn’t open it for a year and a day. I must keep my word, even if he was ever so drunk when I gave it to him. If he’d been sober I’d never have known anything about it.”
“Keep your word! What do you think of that, Doctor?”
“Think?” exclaimed the doctor, brushing his benevolent old eyes with his hand.