18

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE "You 're daft, but you have grit* I know who you be. Edgerton tele- graphed me you were coming. So you like Jason, eh?" "I do/' "I tell you he was a thief, a drun- kard—" "And I tell you he was a genius!" "You tell me! Huh!" "See here, what reason has there been for your dogging Jason? It was n't just your boyish fighting and — how did you find out what became of him after he left Kennuit?" The old man looked at me as though I were a bug. He answered slowly, with a drawl maddening to my impa- tience — impatience so whelming now that my spine was cold, my abdomen constricted. "I know it because in his prison, — " he stopped, yawned, rubbed his jaw,— "in his cell I wrestled with the evil spirit in him." "You won?" "I did." "But after that— when did he die?" I asked. "He did n't." "You mean Jason is alive now, sixty years after—" "He 's ninety-five years old. You see, I 'm— I was till I rechristened myself Williams— I 'm Jason Sanders," he replied. Then for two thousand miles, by village street and way-train and lim- ited, sitting unmoving in berths and silent in smoking-rooms, I fled to the cool solace of Quinta Gates.