THE SUPERB MOMENT
meeting the pinch of the facts. "Exactly what did he say?" he asked.
Mrs. Rader looked inquiringly. She seemed to find something in his manner she did not understand. "He said he met you on the road coming up here, and that you asked him where there was a house that would take you in overnight; and he directed you to this one."
Carron's attentive ear marked the omission. "Well—and then?"
"He said that after you had been here a few days you asked him if he knew the whereabouts of this horse, and he told you he had never heard of such a creature. He said, too, that you had tried to find out from Blanche."
"When did he tell you all this?"
"It was three—no, it was four days ago that he told me about the horse; but since you first came he has been saying you were only playing with Blanche."
"I see! He said that, did he?" Carron was feeling hot and white. "And did you ask him, by any chance, how in the first place I had heard there was such a thing as this horse?"
"Yes, but he said he didn't know. He supposed that some one in the house must have told you."
Carron smiled, a rather ragged grin. It was a
363
