“Peter—Peter Groche?” Astonishment again possessed Sam. “Why—why should he have a grudge against me? Didn’t I save him? Didn’t I keep him out of jail? Didn’t they have what seemed to be a complete case against him?”
“Like enough.”
“Then, too,” urged Sam, “he could have had no notion that I was mixed up in the case. The Major didn’t tell him; nobody else told him. But if he had known, he ought to have been grateful. Either way the thing isn’t reasonable.”
“Huh! Peter ain’t, neither!” grunted Lon.
“But what’s that got to do with——”
Lon loved an argument. [“Hold hard, there!]” said he. “To get at things you’ve got to start right. And it ain’t startin’ right to talk about Peter Groche and reasonable things in the same breath. Look here, now!” Lon picked up an empty liniment bottle, and stood it on its neck; whereupon the bottle fell over on its side. “See what’s happened, don’t you?”
“But it was upside down.”
“Exactly! But that’s the way with Peter Groche—with his brains, I mean. Your mistake is tryin’ to figure on him as a reasonable bein’. But Groche, for years and years, has been like that bottle—all upside down. He’s been carousin’, and loafin’, and stealin’. All his thinkin’ has got warped, and twisted, and crooked.”