"We don't demand anything. We know you didn't have anything to
do with those robbers. Mr. Cummins was a friend of yours; and you
wouldn't do nothing to injure an enemy!"
Mat could use negatives properly when not excited.
The conversation was becoming less and less interesting to the little
man in the cellar. But it was not easy to beat a retreat.
Mamie began to weep softly, but more from joy than otherwise. After the
strain of the past week these honest words of Mat were balm to her.
"I--I will tell you everything, Mr. Bailey. Oh, how I have wanted to
talk to some friend about it! But it was so dreadful! I couldn't breathe
a word of it even to Mother."
Mat was all tenderness now; and the man under the floor began to prick
up his ears.
"I was talking with a young man only a week before that dreadful day,
and he said highwaymen are too generous to steal money from people like
Mr. Cummins. And that the best thing anyone could do when a stage is
robbed would be to tell the robbers about the property of passengers
like him. I didn't believe it at first, and now I know how frightfully
foolish I was. But the young man, who had been in jail once himself, was
so positive, that I really believed a criminal has a sense of honor.
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