The engineer must have been miserly with him,
too, I thought, and never paid him for his services, but only ordered him
about and laughed at him, puppy that he was. That would be it, no doubt.
And this time, perhaps, I was not misled by jealous feelings of my own.
"But the Captain--he was free with his money, if you like," said the
porter at last. "I paid off all my owings with what he gave me--ay, indeed
I did."
When at last I had got rid of the man, I crossed the river; the ice was
firm enough. I was on the main road now. And I walked on, thinking over
the porter's story. That scene at the hut--what did it amount to, after
all? It merely showed that one of the two men was big and strong, the
other a little, would-be sportsman heavily built behind. But the Captain
was an officer--it was something of that sort, perhaps, he had been
thinking. Perhaps he ought to have thought a little more in other ways
while there was yet time--who can say? It was his wife! who had been
drowned.
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