somebody or something he hadn't no taste for!' Why, you could read it on his face! plain as print. It was there!"
"Well?" said Copplestone. "And then?"
"Then," continued Spurge. "Then he stood for just a second or two, looking right and left, up and down. There wasn't a soul in sight—nobody! But—he slunk off—sneaked off—same as a fox sneaks away from a farm-yard. He went down the side of the curtain-wall that shuts in the ruins, taking as much cover as ever he could find—at the end of the wall, he popped into the wood that stands between the ruins and his house. And then, of course, I lost all sight of him."
"And—Mr. Oliver?" said Copplestone. "Did you see him again?"
Spurge took a pull at his rum and water, and re-lighted his pipe.
"I did not," he answered. "I was there until a quarter-past three—then I went away. And no Oliver had come out o' that door when I left."
