“I'd like to come.”

“Well, come then.”

The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.

“I can't do it — I can't get mixed up in it,” he said.

“There's nothing to get mixed up in. It's all over now.”

“When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different — if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that's sentimental but I mean it — to the bitter end.”

I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come, so I stood up.