minutes under that girl's d--d sympathetic fingers you'd have thought it
was genuine. Is it in our trying to get away? Do you call that ten-feet
drift in the pass a swindle? Is it in the chance of Hale getting back
while we're here? That's real enough, isn't it? I say, Ned, did you ever
give your unfettered intellect to the contemplation of THAT?"

Falkner did not reply. There was an interval of silence, but he could
see from the movement of George's shoulders that he was shaking with
suppressed laughter.

"Fancy Mrs. Hale archly introducing her husband! My offering him a
chair, but being all the time obliged to cover him with a derringer
under the bedclothes. Your rushing in from your peaceful pastoral
pursuits in the barn, with a pitchfork in one hand and the girl in the
other, and dear old mammy sympathizing all round and trying to make
everything comfortable."

"I should not be alive to see it, George," said Falkner gloomily.

"You'd manage to pitchfork me and those two women on Hale's horse and
ride away; that's what you'd do, or I don't know you! Look here, Ned,"
he added more seriously, "the only swindling was our bringing that note
here. That was YOUR idea. You thought it would remove suspicion, and as
you believed I was bleeding to death you played that game for all it was
worth to save me. You might have done what I asked you to do--propped
me up in the bushes, and got away yourself. I was good for a couple of
shots yet, and after that--what mattered? That night, the next day, the
next time I take the road, or a year hence? It will come when it will
come, all the same!"