Bates' brow, saying: "Patience! Stiffen your back: look how _I_ slip
into it!"

"Ah, Hogarth, you don't know. I am an innocent man".

"So am I."

"Yes, but _I_ was certain in my own mind to be out within anyway,
six months; _you_ wasn't. That makes a difference, don't it? That
touches the nerve, don't it? Ah!"

"And how did you expect to be out?"

"I had a brother-Bob-in the 9th Lancers in Punjab and his regiment
was ordered home just a week before I was arrested. Well, the
morning after the missus was killed, I went early--for I knew I'd
soon be arrested--to a stableman at Beccles--you know old Harris--and
I made him swear to give a letter to Bob the moment Bob put foot in
Southampton, and to nobody else. In the letter I told Bob where he
was to look for so-and-so, and how he was to prove my innocence--"

"But I don't understand a word of what you are saying", interrupted
Hogarth.

"I'll tell you. I did not kill my Kit. The burn on her face, and on
my hand, wasn't any red-hot poker. Did you ever hear such bosh? Look
here, you mind, don't you, the talk that week about the world
getting blowed up by some comet? Well, about 3 P.M. on the comet
day, as I was walking home through Lagden Dip, an old gent, the same
as took the farm over after you, he comes up to me, and he says: