We had not canvassed our adventure much as yet, Harry and I. The shock and the shame of it, the body and brain-weariness, had disinclined us, during our walk home, to comment on a very frightening experience, out of the reach of whose shadow we could not escape, for all our hurrying. Morning, indeed, found it still with us, like a motionless fog, which, however, we should have endeavoured to dissipate by the breath of frank discussion, had not Uncle Jenico’s illness supervened. In consequence of which I had to face the rather depressing prospect of enduring for a whole day and night the burden of unrelieved silence. Still, about one thing we had been agreed: that we must weigh all the pros and cons before deciding to suppress or confess our discovery. At first, I had been for telling Mr. Sant everything the moment he returned; for he was away in London, as it chanced, on a short visit. But Harry had at once vetoed the idea. “It wouldn’t be fair to foist all the responsibility on him,” he had said, emphatically. “Being a parson, he’d be bound to call in the law, and if he did that, his influence here would be lost, and you might burst your cheeks trying to whistle it back. Who knows who’d be found to be mixed up in the business, if once we talked? Most of the village, likely. And we’re not going to do anything to force him into becoming unpopular, and losing what he’s been years in getting.” “But, Mrs. Puddephatt,” I had complained feebly, “said the village had nothing to do with it.” “Nonsense!” Harry had answered. “She didn’t neither. She said that Dunberry and the Dutchmen worked separate, with Rampick for go-between.” “Well,” I had still protested, “isn’t that much the same?” “Much the same, you gaby!” he had cried. “O yes, of course! Much the same as if two engine wheels connected by a rod turned up their noses about knowing one another.” The technical inspiration of his simile had thereupon surprised him into a grin, and me, even, into a dismally funny attempt at a retort:-- “Well, they _would_ move in different circles, you know. But we’ll sleep on it--that’s the best; and thrash it out between us to-morrow.” That, however, as I have explained, we were debarred from doing; and now there was nothing for me but to possess my troubled soul in patience until Harry’s return. In Uncle Jenico, we had neither of us thought for a moment of confiding. Some instinctive sense of his lack of grasp, of his unpractical weakness prevented us. We would not confound or agitate the dear old fellow; and so here, in the result, I was solitarily and tragically cogitating our problem on the cliff edge.