“My dear fellow,” he said, “you are right.  Try to understand what I am saying, and take it easy.  You rode into a blizzard, right enough.  But that was not last night.  It was ten years ago.”

XXIX

Had Bassett had some wider knowledge of Dick’s condition he might have succeeded better during that bad hour that followed.  Certainly, if he had hoped that the mere statement of fact and its proof would bring results, he failed.  And the need for haste, the fear of the pursuit behind them, made him nervous and incoherent.

He had first to accept the incredible, himself—­that Dick Livingstone no longer existed, that he had died and was buried deep in some chamber of an unconscious mind.  He made every effort to revive him, to restore him into the field of consciousness, but without result.  And his struggle was increased in difficulty by the fact that he knew so little of Dick’s life.  David’s name meant nothing, apparently, and it was the only name he knew.  He described the Livingstone house; he described Elizabeth as he had seen her that night at the theater.  Even Minnie.  But Dick only shook his head.  And until he had aroused some instinct, some desire to live, he could not combat Dick’s intention to return and surrender.

“I understand what you are saying,” Dick would say.  “I’m trying to get it.  But it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

He even tried the war.

“War?  What war?” Dick asked.  And when he heard about it he groaned.

“A war!” he said.  “And I’ve missed it!”

But soon after that he got up, and moved to the door.

“I’m going back,” he said.

“Why?”

“They’re after me, aren’t they?”

“You’re forgetting again.  Why should they be after you now, after ten years?”

“I see.  I can’t get it, you know.  I keep listening for them.”

Bassett too was listening, but he kept his fears to himself.

“Why did you do it?” he asked finally.

“I was drunk, and I hated him.  He married a girl I was crazy about.”

Bassett tried new tactics.  He stressed the absurdity of surrendering for a crime committed ten years before and forgotten.

“They won’t convict you anyhow,” he urged.  “It was a quarrel, wasn’t it?  I mean, you didn’t deliberately shoot him?”

“I don’t remember.  We quarreled.  Yes.  I don’t remember shooting him.”

“What do you remember?”

Dick made an effort, although he was white to the lips.

“I saw him on the floor,” he said slowly, and staggered a little.

“Then you don’t even know you did it.”

“I hated him.”

But Bassett saw that his determination to surrender himself was weakening.  Bassett fought it with every argument he could summon, and at last he brought forward the one he felt might be conclusive.