He saw the inside of that dimly lit tent with its red lining and Stella standing by the table.

He could hear her voice: "This is my little rook-rifle.

I was seeing that it was clean for to-morrow." She had spoken so carelessly, so indifferently that it wasn't conceivable that what was in all their minds could be true.

Yet she had spoken, after all, no more indifferently than Repton was speaking now; and he was in a great stress of grief.

Then Thresk's mind leaped to the weak point in all this chain of presumption.
"But Ballantyne was found outside the tent," he cried with a little note of triumph.