“Nellie, that matter is one you know I cannot bear to talk of.” ("Very recently only,” thought the younger.) “You once asked me to tell you what Mr. Hayne’s crime had been, and I answered that until you could hear the whole story you could not understand the matter at all.  We are both worried about Clancy.  He is not himself; he is wild and imaginative when he’s drinking.  He has some strange fancies since the fire, and he thinks he ought to do something to help the officer because he helped him, and his head is full of Police Gazette stories, utterly without foundation, and he thinks he can tell who the real culprits were,—­or something of that kind.  It is utter nonsense.  I have investigated the whole thing,—­heard the whole story.  It is the trashiest, most impossible thing you ever dreamed of, and would only make fearful trouble if Mr. Hayne got hold of it.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because he is naturally vengeful and embittered, and he would seize on any pretext to make it unpleasant for the officers who brought about his trial.”

“Do you mean that what Clancy says in any way affects them?” asked Nell, with quickening pulse and color.

“It might, if there were a word of truth in it; but it is the maudlin dream of a liquor-maddened brain.  Mrs. Clancy and I both know that what he says is utterly impossible.  Indeed, he tells no two stories alike.”

“Has he told you anything?”

“No; but she tells me everything.”

“How do you know she tells the truth?”

“Nellie!  Why should she deceive me?  I have done everything for them.”

“I distrust her all the same; and you had better be warned in time.  If he has any theory, no matter how crack-brained, or if he knows anything about the case and wants to tell it to Mr. Hayne, you are the last woman on earth who should stand in the way.”

“Upon my word, Nellie Travers, this is going too far!  One would think you believed I wish to stand in the way of that young man’s restoration.”

“Kate, if you lift a hand or speak one word to prevent Clancy’s seeing Mr. Hayne and telling him everything he knows, you will make me believe—­precisely that.”

Captain Rayner heard sobbing and lamentation on the bedroom floor when he came in a few moments after.  Going aloft, he found Miss Travers’s door closed as usual, and his wife in voluble distress of mind.  He could only learn that she and Nellie had had a falling out, and that Nell had behaved in a most unjust, disrespectful, and outrageous way.  She declined to give further particulars.

X.