“No; he didn’t know about the dream. But he refused to believe in two independent mysteries at one time and on one spot. The eternal unities was too many measles for Mullins, though he never heard tell of ’em in his life.” Mr. Upton was no longer irritated by the other’s flippancy. He looked at Thrush with a shining face. “And you never told me what was in your minds!” “It was poison even in mine; it would have been deadly poison to you, in the state you were in. I say! I’ll wear batting-gloves the next time we shake hands!” and Thrush blew softly on his mangled fingers. “You believed he’d done it, and you kept it to yourself,” murmured Mr. Upton, still much impressed. “Tell me, my dear fellow—did you believe it after that interview with Baumgartner in his house?” Thrush emptied his glass at once. “Don’t remind me of that interview, Mr. Upton; there was the lad on the other side of so much lath-and-plaster, and I couldn’t scent him through it! But he never made a sound, confound him!” “Tony’s told me about that; they were whispering, for reasons of their own.” “I ought to have seen that old man listening! His ears must have grown before my purblind eyes! But his story was an extraordinarily interesting and circumstantial effort. And to come back to your question, it did fit in with the theory of a fatal accident on your boy’s part; he was frightened to show his face at school after sleeping in the Park, let alone what he was supposed to have done there; and that, he believed, would break his mother’s heart in any case.” “By Jove, and so it might! It wouldn’t take much just now,” said Mr. Upton, sadly. “So he thought of the ship you wouldn’t let him go out in—and the whole thing fitted in! Of course he had told the old ruffian—saving his presence elsewhere—all about the forbidden voyage; and that gentleman of genius had it ready for immediate use. I’m bound to say he used it on me with excellent effect.” “Same here,” said the ironmaster—“though I’d no idea what you suspected. I thought it a conceivable way out of any bad scrape, for that particular boy.” “It imposed upon us all,” said Thrush, “but one. I was prepared to believe it if you did, and you believed it because you didn’t know your boy as well as you do now. But Miss Upton, who seems to know him better than anybody else—do you remember how she wouldn’t hear of it for a moment?” “I do _so_, God bless her!”