"Stevens, you've as many minds as a weather-cock, jist! Didn't ye
say yerself it looked mighty black for the lad when he was took?"

"I might have said something of the sort," Stevens admitted
reluctantly, after a pause. "His driving round at daybreak with an
empty cart did have an ugly look at first."

"Indade, then."

"Not to anybody who knew Tom Blufton," interrupted Samuel Piggott,
Blufton's brother-in-law. "The boy hasn't a bad streak in him. It was
an outrage. Might as well have suspected Parson Langly or Father
O'Meara."

"If this kind of thing goes on," remarked a man in the corner with
a patch over one eye, "both of them reverend gents will be hauled up,
I shouldn't wonder."

"That's so, Mr. Peters," responded Durgin. "If my respectability
didn't save me, who's safe?"

"Durgin is talking about his respectability! He's joking."

"Look here, Dexter," said Durgin, turning quickly on the speaker,
"when I want to joke, I talk about your intelligence."

"What kind of man is Taggett, anyhow?" asked Piggott. "You saw
him, Durgin."