impatience and a strain of anger too, in my feeling.

"Look here now," I cried, "this place is quite queer enough without
going out of our way to imagine things! That boat was an ordinary boat,
and the man in it was an ordinary man, and they were both going
downstream as fast as they could lick. And that otter _was_ an otter, so
don't let's play the fool about it!"

He looked steadily at me with the same grave expression. He was not in
the least annoyed. I took courage from his silence.

"And for heaven's sake," I went on, "don't keep pretending you hear
things, because it only gives me the jumps, and there's nothing to hear
but the river and this cursed old thundering wind."

"You _fool_!" he answered in a low, shocked voice, "you utter fool.
That's just the way all victims talk. As if you didn't understand just
as well as I do!" he sneered with scorn in his voice, and a sort of
resignation. "The best thing you can do is to keep quiet and try to hold
your mind as firm as possible. This feeble attempt at self-deception
only makes the truth harder when you're forced to meet it."

My little effort was over, and I found nothing more to say, for I knew
quite well his words were true, and that I was the fool, not _he_. Up to
a certain stage in the adventure he kept ahead of me easily, and I think
I felt annoyed to be out of it, to be thus proved less psychic, less
sensitive than himself to these extraordinary happenings, and half
ignorant all the time of what was going on under my very nose. _He knew_
from the very beginning, apparently. But at the moment I wholly missed
the point of his words about the necessity of there being a victim, and