I don't; if we
have a hot sun after the storm, the sooner they get in the better; and
may I have a bowl at them while the ground bites!"

"I'll come up with you," I said, "and see you at it."

"My dear fellow," replied Raffles, "that was my whole feeling about
you. I wanted to 'see you at it'--that was absolutely all. I wanted
to be near enough to lend a hand if you got tied up, as the best of us
will at times. I knew the ground better than you, and I simply
couldn't keep away from it. But I didn't mean you to know that I was
there; if everything had gone as I hoped it might, I should have
sneaked back to town without ever letting you know I had been up. You
should never have dreamt that I had been at your elbow; you would have
believed in yourself, and in my belief in you, and the rest would have
been silence till the grave. So I dodged you at Waterloo, and I tried
not to let you know that I was following you from Esher station. But
you suspected somebody was; you stopped to listen more than once; after
the second time I dropped behind, but gained on you by taking the short
cut by Imber Court and over the foot-bridge where I left my coat and
hat. I was actually in the garden before you were. I saw you smoke
your Sullivan, and I was rather proud of you for it, though you must
never do that sort of thing again. I heard almost every word between
you and the poor devil upstairs. And up to a certain point, Bunny, I
really thought you played the scene to perfection."

The station lights were twinkling ahead of us in the fading velvet of
the summer's night. I let them increase and multiply before I spoke.

"And where," I asked, "did you think I first went wrong?"

"In going in-doors at all," said Raffles. "If I had done that, I
should have done exactly what you did from that point on. You couldn't
help yourself, with that poor brute in that state. And I admired you
immensely, Bunny, if that's any comfort to you now."

Comfort! It was wine in every vein, for I knew that Raffles meant what
he said, and with his eyes I soon saw myself in braver colors. I ceased
to blush for the vacillations of the night, since he condoned them. I
could even see that I had behaved with a measure of decency, in a truly
trying situation, now that Raffles seemed to think so. He had changed
my whole view of his proceedings and my own, in every incident of the
night but one. There was one thing, however, which he might forgive