stated in evidence by the landlord, Swinton, and Dyck had admitted it.
Miles Calhoun was bent upon finding what the story of the quarrel was;
for his own lawyer had told him that Dyck's refusal to give the cause of
the dispute would affect the jury adversely, and might bring him
imprisonment for life. After the formalities of their meeting, Miles
Calhoun said:

"My son, things are black, but they're not so black they can't be
brightened. If you killed Erris Boyne, he deserved it. He was a bad
man, as the world knows. That isn't the point. Now, there's only one
kind of quarrel that warrants non-disclosure."

"You mean about a woman?" remarked Dyck coldly.

The old man took a pinch of snuff nervously. "That's what I mean. Boyne
was older than you, and perhaps you cut him out with a woman."

A wry smile wrinkled the corners of Dyck's mouth. "You mean his wife?"
he asked with irony. "Wife--no!" retorted the old man. "Damn it, no!
He wasn't the man to remain true to his wife."

"So I understand," remarked Dyck; "but I don't know his wife. I never
saw her, except at the trial, and I was so sorry for her I ceased to be
sorry for my self. She had a beautiful, strange, isolated face."

"But that wouldn't influence Boyne," was the reply. "His first wife had
a beautiful and interesting face, but it didn't hold him. He went
marauding elsewhere, and she divorced him by act of parliament. I don't
think you knew it, but his first wife was one of your acquaintances--
Mrs. Llyn, whose daughter you saw just before we left Playmore.