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I thought he was gone this time; but he stopped, poised, as it seemed, over the water, and I heard him cry, "I can't, I can't!" and he sank down all in a heap on the bank, and fell again to sobbing. I hope never to see a man if you can call Smugg a man like that again. He sat where he was, and I where I was, till the moon paled and a distant hint of day discovered us.
And presently, through the stillness of the summer night, came the strangest, saddest sound; catching my ear as it drifted across the meadow. Smugg was sobbing, and his sobs never loud rose and fell with the subdued stress of intolerable pain. Suddenly he leaped up, cried aloud, and flung his hands above his head.
I took a match from the box, struck it, and applied it to my pipe, and, punctuating my words with interspersed puffings, I said carelessly: "By the way, Smugg, Pyrrha's going to be married to Joe Shanks to-morrow." I don't know how he looked. I kept my face from him, but, after a long minute's pause, he answered: "Thank you, Robertson. It's Aeschylus this morning, isn't it?"
But just tell me, Betsy, what do you think of Mr. Smugg?" "I don't think that of him!" said she, snapping her pretty red fingers. "Joe 'ud make ten of him. I wish Joe'd talk to him a bit."
Presently his door opened, and he creaked gently downstairs. I sprang out of bed and looked out of the window. Smugg, fully dressed, was gliding along the path toward Dill's farm. Some impulse curiosity only, very likely made me jump into my trousers, seize a flannel jacket, draw on a pair of boots, and hastily follow him.
The secret is not, perhaps, entirely his own." We all nodded. "We enter a plea of not guilty for Mr. Smugg," observed the chairman gravely. "I seed 'im do it," said Joe. No one spoke. Joe finished his beer, pulled his forelock, and turned on his heel. Suddenly Smugg burst into speech. He could hardly form his words, and they jostled one another in the breathless confusion of his utterance.
"Never!" said Bird. "Mr. Robertson?" "Never!" said I. "Mr. Smugg?" "I seed 'im this very morning!" cried Joe, like an accusing angel. Smugg took his hand away from his face, after giving his wet brow one last dab. He looked at Gayford and at Joe, but said nothing. "Mr. Smugg?" repeated the chairman. "Mr. Smugg," interposed Tritton suavely, "probably feels himself in a difficulty.
We all nodded, and filled fresh pipes. Presently Smugg sidled in. We had seen little of him the last week; save when he was construing he had taken refuge in his own room. When he came in now, Gayford wagged his head significantly at me; apparently, it was my task to bell the cat. I rose, and went to the mantelpiece. Smugg had sat down at the table, and my back was to him.
Still, I could not rest in conjecture, and my curiosity led me up to Dill's little farm on the afternoon of the day of Joe's sudden appearance. The others let me go alone. Directly after dinner Smugg went to his bedroom, and the other three had gone off to play lawn tennis at the vicar's. I lit my pipe, and strolled along till I reached the gate that led to Dill's meadow.
Pyrrha was leaning against a barn, one foot crossed over the other, her arms akimbo, a string of her bonnet in her mouth, and her blue eyes laughing from under long lashes. Smugg stood limply opposite her, his trousers bagging over his half-bent knees, his hat in one hand, and in the other a handkerchief, with which, from time to time, he mopped his forehead.
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