“This is just h-ll, George.”

George Lee, with a smile on his boyish face, lazily moved his head.

“I don’t know!  If it wasn’t for the old woman, who is the one solid chunk of absolute goodness here, expecting nothing, wanting nothing, it would be good fun enough!  These two women, cooped up in this house, wanted excitement.  They’ve got it!  That man Hale wanted to show off by going for us; he’s had his chance, and will have it again before I’ve done with him.  That d—­d fool of a messenger wanted to go out of his way to exchange shots with me; I reckon he’s the most satisfied of the lot!  I don’t know why you should growl.  You did your level best to get away from here, and the result is, that little Puritan is ready to worship you.”

“Yes—­but this playing it on them—­George—­this—­”

“Who’s playing it?  Not you; I see you’ve given away our names already.”

“I couldn’t lie, and they know nothing by that.”

“Do you think they would be happier by knowing it?  Do you think that soft little creature would be as happy as she was to-night if she knew that her husband had been indirectly the means of laying me by the heels here?  Where is the swindle?  This hole in my leg?  If you had been five minutes under that girl’s d—­d sympathetic fingers you’d have thought it was genuine.  Is it in our trying to get away?  Do you call that ten-feet drift in the pass a swindle?  Is it in the chance of Hale getting back while we’re here?  That’s real enough, isn’t it?  I say, Ned, did you ever give your unfettered intellect to the contemplation of that?”

Falkner did not reply.  There was an interval of silence, but he could see from the movement of George’s shoulders that he was shaking with suppressed laughter.

“Fancy Mrs. Hale archly introducing her husband!  My offering him a chair, but being all the time obliged to cover him with a derringer under the bedclothes.  Your rushing in from your peaceful pastoral pursuits in the barn, with a pitchfork in one hand and the girl in the other, and dear old mammy sympathizing all round and trying to make everything comfortable.”

“I should not be alive to see it, George,” said Falkner gloomily.

“You’d manage to pitchfork me and those two women on Hale’s horse and ride away; that’s what you’d do, or I don’t know you!  Look here, Ned,” he added more seriously, “the only swindling was our bringing that note here.  That was your idea.  You thought it would remove suspicion, and as you believed I was bleeding to death you played that game for all it was worth to save me.  You might have done what I asked you to do—­propped me up in the bushes, and got away yourself.  I was good for a couple of shots yet, and after that—­what mattered?  That night, the next day, the next time I take the road, or a year hence?  It will come when it will come, all the same!”

He did not speak bitterly, nor relax his smile.  Falkner, without speaking, slid his hand along the coverlet.  Lee grasped it, and their hands remained clasped together for a few minutes in silence.