“Is that so, lad—­is that so?” Captain Danny put out a hand like a bird’s claw and hooked me by the cuff.  “Wasn’ there nothing in it about Execution Dock; nothing about ripe medlars—­’medlars a-rottin’ on the tree’?  No?”—­for I shook my head.  “Well, then, I could be sworn I heard him singin’ them words for minutes, an’ me sittin’ all the while wi’ the horrors on me afore I dared look in his damned face.  An’ you tell me he piped but a line of it?” His eyes searched mine anxiously.  “Brooks,” he went on, in a voice almost coaxing, “I’d give five hundred pound at this moment if you could look me in the face an’ tell me the whole scare was nothing but fancy—­that he wasn’t there!”

His grasp relaxed as I shook my head again.  Despair grew in his eyes, and he pulled back his hand.

“I’ll put it to you another way,” said he, after seeming to reflect for a while.  “Suppose there was a couple o’ men mixed up in an ugly job—­by which I don’t mean to say there was any real harm in the business; leastways not to start with; but, as it went on, these two men were forced to do something that brought them within reach o’ the law.  We’ll put it that, when the thing was done, the one o’ this pair felt it heavy upon his mind, but t’other didn’ care no more than a brass button; an’ the one that took it serious—­as you might say—­ lost sight o’ the other for years, an’ meantime picked up with a little religion, an’ made oath with hisself that all the profits o’ the job (for there were profits) should come into innocent hands—­ You catch on to this?”

I nodded.

“Well, then”—­he leant forward, his palm resting amid a bed of nettles.  He did not appear to feel their sting, although, while he spoke, I saw the bark of his hand whiten slowly with blisters—­ “well, then, you can’t go for to argue with me that the A’mighty would go for to strike the chap that repented by means o’ the chap that didn’.  Tisn’ reasonable nor religious to think such a thing—­is it now?”

“He might punish the one first,” said I, judicially, “and keep the other—­the wicked man—­for a worse punishment in the end.  A great deal,” I added, “might depend on what sort of crime they’d committed.  If ’twas a murder, now—­”

“Murder?” He caught me up sharply, and his eyes turned from watching me, to throw a quick glance back along the footpath, then fastened themselves on the horizon.  “Who’s a-talkin’ of any such thing?”

“I was putting a case, sir—­putting it as bad as possible.  ‘Murder will out,’ they say; but with smaller crimes it may be different.”

“Murder?” He sprang up and began to pace to and fro.  “How came that in your head, eh?” He threw me a furtive sidelong look, and halted before me mopping his forehead.  “I’ll tell you what, though:  Murder there’ll be if you don’t help me give that devil the slip.”

“But, sir, he never offered to follow you.”