Company's stables were at the other end of the village. Oldham must
have walked the length of the street. He had said it was before
daylight; but the look of the man's eyes was quizzical and cold behind
the glasses. Still, it was always quizzical and cold. Bob called himself
a panicky fool. Just the same, he wished now he had looked for
footprints in the dust of the street. While his brain was thus busy with
swift conjecture and the weighing of probabilities, his tongue was
making random conversation, and his vacant eye was taking in and
reporting to his intelligence the most trivial things. Generally
speaking, his intelligence did not catch the significance of what his
eyes reported until after an appreciable interval. Thus he noted that
Oldham had smoked his cigar down to a short butt. This unimportant fact
meant nothing, until his belated mind told him that never before had he
seen the man actually smoking. Oldham always held a cigar between his
lips, but he contented himself with merely chewing it or rolling it
about. And this was very early, before breakfast.

"Never saw you smoke before," he remarked abruptly, as this bubble of
irrelevant thought came to the surface.

"No?" said Oldham, politely.

"It would make me woozy all day to smoke before I ate," said Bob, his
voice trailing away, as his inner ear once more took up its listening
for the hubbub that must soon break.

As the moments went by, the suspense of this waiting became almost
unbearable. A small portion of him kept up its semblance of conversation
with Oldham; another small portion of him made minute and careful notes
of trivial things; all the rest of him, body and soul, was listening, in
the hope that soon, very soon, a scream would break the suspense. From
time to time he felt that Oldham was looking at him queerly, and he
rallied his faculties to the task of seeming natural.

"Aren't you feeling well?" asked the older man at last. "You're mighty
pale. You want to watch out where you drink water around some of these
places."

Bob came to with a snap.

"Didn't sleep well," said he, once more himself.

"Well, that wouldn't trouble me," yawned Oldham; "if it hadn't been for
cigars I'd have dropped asleep in this chair an hour ago. You said you
couldn't smoke before breakfast; neither can I ordinarily. This isn't
before breakfast for me, it's after supper; and I've smoked two just to
keep awake."

"Why keep awake?" asked Bob.

"When I pass