"Why haven't you told, yourself ?" "Aye!" he said.

"You may well ask me that.

But I wasn't called as a witness at yon inquest." "You could have come forward," I suggested.
"I didn't choose," he retorted.
We both looked at each other again, and while we looked he swigged off his drink and helped himself, just as generously, to more.

And, as I was getting bolder by that time, I set to work at questioning him.
"You'll be attaching some importance to what you saw ?" said I.
"Well," he replied slowly, "it's not a pleasant thing--for a man's safety--to be as near as what he was to a place where another man's just been done to his death." "You and I were near enough, anyway," I remarked.
"We know what we were there for," he flung back at me.

"We don't know what he was there for." "Put your tongue to it, Mr.Crone," I said boldly.