pson--when you cut yourself off?"

"Oh, that," Dudley replied almost carelessly. "It mayn't amount to
anything, and I only shut up because I didn't want Macartney to take the
wind out of my sails by saying so. It was just that if Thompson ever
went to Caraquet it ought to be simple enough to find the boy who took
his horse back to Billy Jones, and--there's apparently no such boy in
Caraquet! What set me on Billy Jones first was that he stammered and
stuttered about not knowing him, till I don't believe there ever was any
such boy. He's never been heard of since, any more than if he'd gone
into the ground. And what I want to know is _why_?--if it's all straight
about Thompson and Billy Jones!"

I was silent, remembering--I don't know why--the half-dead boy I had
carried home to Skunk's Misery. There was no cause to connect him with
the return of Thompson's horse to the Halfway, yet somehow my mind did
connect him with it, obstinately. I had never really discovered how he
had been hurt by a falling tree, and without reason some animal instinct
told me the two things belonged together and that they were queer. But
before I could say so, Dudley burst into unexpected speech, his little
pig's eyes as fierce as a tiger's: "Look here, Stretton! I'm going to
find out who drowned Thompson, and who took Van Ruyne's emeralds--and
hand them both over to the law, if I die for it. And when I say that you
know I mean it!"

I did. But once more I made no answer, for I thought I heard Marcia in
the passage. I am quick on my feet, and I was outside the door before I
finished thinking it. But it was not Marcia outside; it was only
Macartney. Yet I stopped short and stared at him, for it was a Macartney
I had never seen. He was close to the living-room door, just as if he
had been listening to Dudley, and his face was the face of a devil. I
never want to see set eyes like his again. But all the effect they had
on me was to make me furiously angry, and I swore at him.

"What the devil's the matter with you, Macartney? What do you want?"

"My keys," roughly. "I left them somewhere around this passage and I had
to come back for them; I couldn't get into my office. As for what's the
matter"--he lowered his voice and motioned me some feet away, out of the
light from the living-room door--"I heard all Wilbraham said just now,
and by gad, the man's crazy! We've got to get him off all that rot about
Billy Jones, or any one else, murdering Thomp