CHAPTER V
"VARGE, IS IT TRUE?"
THE battle had begun. During the short drive through the town, the cynosure of hastily attracted eyes; during the longer drive on the country road, meeting only now and then a passing team, Varge had sat quietly between the sheriff and the district attorney, giving by no slightest sign an inkling of the suspicion aroused within him that there was an ulterior motive for this visit to the Merton homestead.
"Varge," the district attorney had said bluffly, when they started, "we are taking you out there to have you show us exactly what you did and what happened. You understand though, of course, that you are perfectly within your rights to refuse to say a word."
And Varge had answered him quietly: "I have already said I am guilty. What have I to conceal? I am perfectly willing to go."
And then, without logical, tangible reason for it, he had sensed some trap being laid for him by these two, and had set his mind to discovering it. His first thought had been the fender bar—it was there, a final, absolute point should it be needed; he had seen to that, but he had slurred it over in his story, deliberately, intentionally, through a sensitive, innate diffidence that had been his all his life, a modesty that shrank from notoriety that prompted him—rather than to thrust it forward vauntingly—to keep the knowledge of his own
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