"May I say that Watson and Miss Day seemed the least concerned, and even
venture a step further and guess that they were the two who seemed to you
to look upon the dead man with repugnance?"

I admitted that this was the case, and it was then that Zena, having
heard the whole story from her grandfather, accused me of lingering in
the tent that night for the purpose of seeing Sister Pomona again.

"Now, two points as we go," said Quarles, interrupting our little
side-spar. "Miss Day volunteered no statement when I talked of love.
Could she have made an unqualified denial I think she would have done so.
I did not ask her a direct question on purpose; I thought she would be
more likely to answer an indirect one. Her silence, I fancy, was the
answer. In view of what the landlady told us, I think we are safe in
assuming that Henley admired her, and that she was aware of the fact. The
second point is Watson's defense of the men who had been in prison, his
hobby, as his wife called it. We will come back to both these points in a
moment. Let us consider the dead man first. The face was evidently that
of a fast liver, not that of a decent man such as Watson spoke of; the
throat and neck were not of the kind one expects in a singer, but, of
course, we must not argue too much from this; the hands showed breed,
certainly, but they had never been used to twang the strings of a banjo
or guitar."

"But Watson distinctly said--"

"And the hat with 'H' in it had never fitted the dead man," said Quarles.
"Oh, I remember perfectly what Watson said, and, moreover, I believe I
heard a good many of his thoughts which were not put into words--you can
hear thoughts, you know, only it is with such delicacy that the very idea