"To c-court?" Eve's eyes were harrowed. "But can't anything be done--your folks at home----?"
Michael shook his head, his lips were set. "I'm not going to tell them," he stated. "I'll take what's coming to me."
"But they can't convict you of something you never did," I broke in. "Why, it's all too absurd!"
"Well, I don't know. You see it's going to be sort of hard to explain what I was doing in an empty house in the middle of the night. And if Bangs has left the country----" he shrugged.
"Wouldn't it do some good if we were all to go over to Millport and tell the--the judge or whoever it is, that you were with us Saturday afternoon on the beach?" Eve asked.
Michael shook his head positively. "I wouldn't have you get mixed up in it for anything," he said. "Besides they would simply think you were my friends trying to help me out of a tight hole. They'd only have your word that I was with you, you see."
Eve digested this. It was rather a new idea, I suppose, that her word might not be good for much in a court of law.
Michael got up. "Well I've got to be getting back to work," he said. "How do you feel, Hamish? All right?"
"Poor Hamish!" Eve cried. "Here we've been sitting talking while you were starving to death! And after that awful night!"
"Well it was kind of messy down there," Hamish said. "It was lucky the bally old well was half filled up or I might have been a goner. You see I landed on a lot of leaves and old junk that had been thrown down there to get rid of it, I s'pose. So I just made myself as comfortable as I could and waited for daylight. I figured that somebody'd be along lookin' for me soon as it got light. But it was kind of tiresome waitin'."
"Tiresome! I think you had pretty good nerve!" I said. We all got up. "Hope my car's all right," Hamish said, "I guess I'll get me one of those Turkish baths up at the hotel after I've had dinner."
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WE tried to sew carpet rags that afternoon but it was rather a farce. So much had happened that morning that it seemed impossible to settle down to anything so prosaic. We kept talking of Michael and his awful predicament, and racking our brains to think of some way of helping him. Eve was inclined to blame Hamish for his part in the affair, for not coming forward when he saw Michael being taken into custody and vouching for his identity. But I pointed out that Hamish himself would have had some explaining to do and would probably have only made matters worse by trying to account for Michael's presence in the house.