“No enlightenment,” resumed Eugene, after certain minutes of silence. “I feel sincerely apologetic, my dear Mortimer, but nothing comes.”
“If nothing comes,” returned Mortimer, “nothing can come from it. So I shall hope that this may hold good throughout, and that there may be nothing on foot. Nothing injurious to you, Eugene, or—”
Eugene stayed him for a moment with his hand on his arm, while he took a piece of earth from an old flowerpot on the windowsill and dexterously shot it at a little point of light opposite; having done which to his satisfaction, he said, “Or?”
“Or injurious to anyone else.”
“How,” said Eugene, taking another little piece of earth, and shooting it with great precision at the former mark, “how injurious to anyone else?”
“I don’t know.”
“And,” said Eugene, taking, as he said the word, another shot, “to whom else?”
“I don’t know.”
Checking himself with another piece of earth in his hand, Eugene looked at his friend inquiringly and a little suspiciously. There was no concealed or half-expressed meaning in his face.
“Two belated wanderers in the mazes of the law,” said Eugene, attracted by the sound of footsteps, and glancing down as he spoke,