CHAPTER X
THE INVALID CURATE
Spurge and his visitor sat staring at each other in silence for a few minutes; the silence was eventually broken by Copplestone.
"Of course," he said reflectively, "if Mr. Oliver was looking round those ruins he could easily spend half an hour there."
"Just so," agreed Spurge. "He could spend an hour. If so be as he was one of these here antiquarian-minded gents, as loves to potter about old places like that, he could spend two hours, three hours, profitable-like. But he'd have come out in the end, and the evidence is, guv'nor, that he never did come out! Even if I am just now lying up, as it were, I'm fully what they term o-fay with matters, and, by all accounts, after Bassett Oliver went up that there path, subsequent to his bit of talk with Ewbank, he was never seen no more 'cepting by me, and possibly by Squire Greyle. Them as lives a good deal alone, like me guv'nor, develops what you may call logical faculties—they thinks—and thinks deep. I've thought. B. O.—that's Oliver—didn't go back by the way he'd come, or he'd ha' been seen. B. O. didn't go forward or through the woods to the headlands, or he'd ha' been seen. B. O. didn't go down to the shore, or he'd ha' been seen. 'Twixt you and me, guv'nor, B. O.'s dead body is in that there Keep!"
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