t town all the
evening, he had been in divers companies in several public-houses, and
he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle. There was nothing against
him, save the quarrel; and my sister had quarrelled with him, and with
everybody else about her, ten thousand times. As to the strange man; if
he had come back for his two bank-notes there could have been no dispute
about them, because my sister was fully prepared to restore them.
Besides, there had been no altercation; the assailant had come in so
silently and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could look
round.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, however
undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered unspeakable
trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I should at last
dissolve that spell of my childhood and tell Joe all the story. For
months afterwards, I every day settled the question finally in the
negative, and reopened and reargued it next morning. The contention
came, after all, to this;--the secret was such an old one now, had so
grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it
away. In addition to the dread that, having led up to so much mischief,
it would be now more likely than ever to alienate Joe from me if he
believed it, I had a further restraining dread that he would not believe
it, but would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a
monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself, of course--for,
was I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing is always
done?--and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see any
such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of the
assailant.

The Constables and the Bow Street men from London--for, this happened in
the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police--were about the house for
a week or two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of like
authorities doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously
wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas,
and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead
of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances. Also, they stood
about the door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks
that filled the whole neighborhood with admiration; and they had a
mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as
taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.