"It may be that _you_ will save him, after all," I whispered. "You have hidden yourself here--you are an unknown man; they cannot find out anything about you. If he is silent, it may happen that no one will ever suspect. But will he be silent?--that is the point. Or will he feel, in a cooler moment, that this deed cuts him off for ever from those for whose sake it was done. What will he do?" Once again I found myself counting and calculating the chances--not for myself, but for another this time. In some strange fashion the boy must have tracked Murray Olivant to this place; must have struck him down; and must now be wandering, with that brand of Cain upon him, fighting the desperate battle with himself that a man must fight who has in one moment put himself outside the sphere of ordinary things; and so is hiding and dodging in a crowded world to escape. I remembered that certain steamer tickets had been bought, in order to carry out that deception which had after all been useless; I knew that those tickets must be in the possession of the dead man. With the cowardice of one who puts off what he knows to be inevitable until the last moment, I searched everywhere for them about the room--looking on the mantelshelf, and in a small new portmanteau in the inner room--everywhere but where I knew instinctively they must be. Then at last, when there was nothing else to be done, I turned to the man himself, and knelt beside him. Even as I did so I raised my head, and listened. The night was very still and windless; there was not a sound anywhere about the house. But I had distinctly heard the scrape of a footstep on the landing outside--that, and the movement of some one against the door. I got up very slowly and stealthily from my knees, and suddenly blew out the candle; then I felt my way to the door of the room, and stood listening again. There was a small lobby outside this room, and at the further side of it the door leading to the staircase. While I stood there, I distinctly heard some one pressing against the door: heard the heavy breathing of some one who was evidently striving to peer through the keyhole. I stood perfectly still in the darkness, and listened; heard cautious footsteps moving away from the door, and then with greater confidence going more loudly down the stairs. And I knew instinctively that the murderer had been there, and had gone away again. There had been a sudden thought in my mind for a moment that I would follow him; would overtake him, and so, coming face to face with him, make him understand that I knew the truth. With that understanding there might have come the knowledge that I was his friend, who had suffered just as he must be suffering now, and who was ready and willing to help him. But that thought was gone as quickly as it had come; I felt that I should only be met with furious denials; I knew that I must keep my knowledge to myself for the present.